Yellow Rose of the Wastes
by Corpus Carrion
Summary: The Lone Wanderer, while unknowingly becoming a ghoul, must put her trust in an old enemy and a strange ghoul with ambiguous morals in order to survive an onslaught of raiders, slavers, and Enclave soldiers. Not a quest retelling. Contains no Charon.
1. Chapter 1

_Because I am ignoring the main quest, I've altered the events in the tutorial section of the game. As I'll mention again later, James tried to leave the vault when the Lone Wanderer was 16, and died in the process. She took over as vault doctor until she left, at 19. Chapter 1 begins just after she's left. Just to clear up any confusion. Other than the questlines, I haven't messed with any canon game lore._

_A lot of my OCs share names with NPCs. In general, it will be pretty obvious when I'm talking about a game NPC, and there are only a few in the whole story anyway._

_Also, this story is already complete. I'm uploading it one chapter at a time so that it'll stay on the front page for more than a week or whatever. If you want to just read all of it now, PM me and I'll send you the whole thing._

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**Chapter 1**

_Where am I?_

Slowly, the ex-vault-dweller became aware of a bright light shining on her. She opened her eyes drowsily, then quickly shut them. Even through her eyelids the light burned her eyes, so she made a curtain of her hands in front of them. She tried to organize her thoughts as her eyes adjusted.

Then memories of the previous night came rushing back: the security officers shooting at her, the door closing...and the Wasteland. A large white circle had floated in the black and blue of the sky. The moon. She remembered reading that it was many thousands of miles away, but it looked closer than that. She could see the valleys and ridges on the bright surface, even from this distance.

It was day now, and the sun had banished the comforting dark. She squinted her eyes open and stared at her fingers, which were still planted on her face. The edges glowed red from the light. Remembering some tinted glasses she'd taken from the vault, she searched her backpack one-handed for them, then slipped them into place on her ears. She blinked and the grass she was looking at blurred into place. _How did people ever live like this? It's like staring at a lightbulb. _

The dark glasses helped enough that she could open her eyes without squinting. It was only after she stopped worrying about the light that she noticed something else odd: a soft crackling noise. She had a vision of a giant insect clicking its jaws together. She looked over one shoulder, then another. There was only dirt and rocks around her, and a few stray blades of long, dead grass twitching in the wind. It was silent but for that noise.

It was a little annoying, but she decided to ignore it. It was hard to pay attention to something so small when there was so much else to look at, after all. In the light of day it was even more beautiful and terrifying. In front of her lay the rolling hills, mountains, and plains that were the Wasteland, extending in all directions for what seemed like forever. She looked out farther and farther, her eyes following the decrepit roads, overpasses, and silhouettes of ancient cities to the horizon, where the land met the sky. And the sky... her jaw fell as she gazed at it. Now it was light blue, and still huge_. _Enormous. She felt dizzy again. She'd never imagined that anything could possibly be this big. The world just went on forever. No walls or ceilings, just open space. _What holds it all up?_ The open space made her feel vulnerable, as though something might swoop down and attack her at any moment. _Actually, that's probably a possibility..._

A light breeze blew, brushing a red-blonde hair across her face. It was different than the air that came out of the vents in the vault. It was cool, and it smelled strange. She wondered if it would make her sick. The Overseer said the air outside was toxic...

No, he was wrong. Her father was killed trying to get out here, and it wasn't for no reason. He wasn't stupid. He'd been here before. He'd never told her outright, but she knew. Whatever was out here, it couldn't be worse than what was behind her.

She picked up her bag and turned to begin walking in the direction she'd been going last night, but stopped at the ominous sight before her.

Sickly looking yellow-brown clouds hung in the air above a pool of brownish sludge that she guessed wasn't just mud, judging by the oil drums half buried in it. _That can't be good. _She could have kicked herself when she realized that the clicking noise she'd heard was the geiger counter on her Pip-Boy. She'd never heard it before now. Those annoying announcements on the Vault 101 radio flashed in her mind: "Zero rads, as always!"

She backed away quickly until the noise stopped, but she knew it was pointless. She was dead meat if she'd been sleeping there that whole time. She must have been too out of it to notice the clouds and the counter last night. She sat down and stared at the poisonous clouds in disbelief. She couldn't believe it. Barely 24 hours out of the vault and she was going to die from something as stupid as sleeping next to toxic waste. How could she not have seen it there?

But...maybe it was better this way. Better to die out here than to rot in the vault for the rest of her life. She'd seen the Wasteland, the moon. She'd been prepared to die when she came out here.

Although, she noted, she didn't feel sick. That was surprising. Radiation poisoning was supposed to be horribly painful, and if she had absorbed as many rads as she thought, she should be feeling it by now. She checked the health status screen on her Pip-Boy. The line that indicated absorbed rads was pressed up against the right edge of the screen: over 1000. She swallowed hard. She should be dead _now_, according to this. She navigated to another screen, then came back, but it read the same thing. It must have been malfunctioning. There was no way she could still be alive after taking over 1000 rads.

She stared at the screen, unsure of what to do. She hadn't died yet, at least, and she hadn't started throwing up. She remembered the pills she'd carefully chosen from her father's cabinet before she left. She'd brought a bottle of rad-x, but it wouldn't do her any good to take it now. There hadn't been any rad away that she could find. Maybe she could find some somewhere.

She started off in the direction of the nearest shell of a building she could see. It looked unbelievably far away, but it took only ten minutes or so to get there. Still, she was winded after going so far and had to walk slower than she usually did. The longest hallway in the vault was only fifty yards long, so never took long to get anywhere. She realized this was another problem she'd overlooked. Everything was so huge out here that you had to walk for miles to get anywhere, and she was by no means in good physical shape.

As she neared her destination, it grew into a broken house that was little more than two walls and a foundation. She stepped over a broken beam into the rubble that was left of the house. The floor was covered in large piles of broken sheetrock and furniture, all dull grey with ash and dirt. She sneezed as she kicked up cloud of dust.

There was a bookshelf leaned up against one of the still-standing walls. Some objects were sitting on the shelves, she saw, and she picked her way across the debris to investigate. There was an unused stimpak lying there, but no rad away. The stimpak was dirty, so she didn't touch it. Using an unsanitary needle made her uncomfortable. It technically didn't matter since the solution in the stim would kill any viruses or bacteria on contact, but habits learned from years as a medical assistant die hard.

A small movement to her right caught her eye, and she turned to see a radroach skittering by. She quickly drew her BB gun and trained it on the insect, but then stopped. The roach wasn't attacking her. It ignored her, innocently wagging its antennae. She holstered her weapon. This wasn't the vault. This time, it was _she_ who was intruding.

She stepped around the roach and went to the front of the house, where the walls had fallen but the front door still stood. She saw that not far away were the remains of an entire neighborhood. This house was merely one of many decimated by the war. She absentmindedly began walking down the road that ran through the middle of the neighborhood.

The vault had had almost no contact with the outside since the war, and there wasn't much information about the current state of the world. All the drawings and photographs she'd seen of the outside were pre-war. Everything was so colorful and idyllic, so perfect. There were green trees and grass everywhere, and lawns were perfectly manicured, as flat as the pavement. Everything: clothes, cars, faces, were clean and sparkling. It seemed that the world she had discovered outside the vault was the complete opposite of the one that had existed 200 years ago.

Which might have been why the Overseer, and everyone else in vault 101, for that matter, was so reluctant to open the vault. They wanted to preserve a part of pre-war America, however small. It was fine, for them. But they had no right to force her to take part in it.

"At least that's what Dad thought," she said aloud. And perhaps he'd been right to try to escape, even when his services were so important to the survival of the vault. This place was unlike anything she'd ever imagined. There were no green trees, but there was something attractive in the way the black, bare tree branches were silhouetted against the sunlight. As she pondered all of this, she wandered past the last houses of the ruined neighborhood and down the road beyond for what was probably several hours, but seemed like several days.

She jumped when a gunshot rang out nearby. She recognized the sound right away; she'd heard similar sounding shots fired from the 10 mm pistols that the Vault 101 security guards had, but this was considerably louder, and the pitch was lower. She was tempted to go toward it, but knew how unintelligent that was. She wasn't about to make another idiotic mistake. She turned to go in the opposite direction of the sound, then stopped. What the heck? She was dead anyway. She might as well satisfy her curiosity. Turning around again, she hurried toward the sound.

It had come from the other side of a hill, which she climbed as quickly as her sore legs would allow. Peeking over the crest of the hill, she saw the skeleton of a house on the other side. There were more gunshots on the opposite side of the house. The distinct sounds were becoming more clear. One gun had a higher pitch and let out shots in quick succession. The other was low and sounded off less often. A wall blocked her view of the shooters, but a shower of bullets skidded across the ground at the base of the hill, spraying a cloud of dirt in their wake. Someone yelled something unintelligible. She couldn't see anything. She had to get closer. She tip-toed down the slope and crouched next to the standing wall of the house.

An inhuman scream was cut short by a final gunshot. She heard someone slump to the ground, and then it was quiet. There were some metallic noises-the survivor reloading their weapon. Rustling. Soft footsteps. They seemed to be moving away from her, so she risked a glance around the edge of the wall.

Two corpses were sprawled on the ground, blood still spreading in pools around them. They wore strange clothing that looked like it was homemade out of recycled bits and pieces of leather and cloth rags, and all but small sections of their heads were shaved.

The one closest to her still had his eyes open, gazing unseeingly at her. There was a row of ragged red holes across his chest. She'd seen plenty of blood before, but this...this was something different entirely.

She tore her eyes away to glance at his killer, who was standing over to the left, bending over the other corpse. She adjusted her sunglasses. The sun was behind him and she could only make out his silhouette. He took something from the body and pocketed it, then turned back toward the house. She darted back behind the wall. Her heart pounded. Had he seen her? She waited, but no more sounds came.

As quietly as she could, she moved one eye out from behind the wall. She couldn't see anyone. She moved out a little farther, looking wildly left and right. The man was gone.

Then she froze. Something hard was pressed against her spine.

"Don't move." The voice was low and rough, and serious as could be. He must have gone around the other side of the house. How had he been so quiet?

She scarcely breathed. She probably couldn't have moved even if she'd tried. Not that it had happened to her often, but it was easy enough to recognize the barrel of a gun when it was pressed up against you like that. The knowledge that she would be dead from radiation poisoning soon anyway didn't keep her from being terrified. Achingly slow seconds passed. The spot where the gun dug into her throbbed with the anticipation of pain.

"What do you want?" he said.

"Nothing! I mean... I heard gunshots, and I just... thought maybe I could help." It was a lie, but she really didn't know why she had come after the gunshots, anyway. Boredom?

"With a BB gun?" He was making fun of her. At least he didn't seem to be taking her seriously as a threat. Maybe he'd let her go.

She felt the tip of the gun leave her back as man circled around to face her. When she saw his face, she gasped, choked on some spit, and broke into a coughing fit. She thought for sure that he would shoot her at this sudden movement, but he just stood and watched. She buried her head in the crook of her arm until the coughing subsided.

She raised watery eyes to look at him in awe. She was reminded of the pictures of mummies in her history book. His skin was yellowish and in many places appeared to have worn off, revealing muscles, tendons, and even bone beneath. His nose was missing entirely beyond his nasal bone, leaving a large hole in the middle of his face. The left side of his mouth had deteriorated so much that she could see a bit of teeth where his lips were gone. A very large gun hung from his shoulder by a leather strap.

"Are-" cough, "-are you okay?"

The man didn't answer, but gave her a mildly puzzled look. He looked her up and down. "You're from that vault," he said. "One-oh-one, up the hill?" He jerked his head toward the vault.

"Yeah," she replied. "Do you need some stimpaks?"

"No. Look, kid, if you aren't here to jet up with those idiots," he gestured to the corpses, "or make a futile attempt to rob me, then get out of here. Vault dwellers attract too much attention for my taste." He turned to leave.

"Wait!"

He glared at her.

"Um... do you have any rad away? I wouldn't ask, normally, but it's kind of an emergency."

For a moment he looked annoyed, but the look faded. "No."

_Well, it was worth a try. _

He went to the body of the other man he'd killed and patted it down, searching for something. Since he didn't say anything further, she took her cue to leave before he changed his mind and decided to kill her. She started back the way she came.

As she crested the hill, however, another danger loomed into view: something large and black, with the same decayed appearance as the man, but with claws and teeth.

_Uh-oh._

The thing turned its head to look at her, and for a long, tense second they just blinked at each other, each equally surprised to see the other. Then it charged. She turned on her heel and took off faster than she had ever run before. Her backpack jumped on her back and slowed her down, so she shrugged it off and kept running. She could hear the animal's feet pounding behind her. It would catch up with her in seconds, by the sound of it. Skidding around the corner of the house, she slammed into the man. He shoved her to the ground and told her to stay down. She covered her head with her arms as she heard the beast round the corner. There was a loud bangingclose to her ears, and the animal roared. She looked up in time to see another round of bullets pumped into the skull of her pursuer. It collapsed without further vocalizations.

The man squatting beside her rose and quickly disappeared around the wall. She crawled forward to watch him run off to the right, over the hill. He stopped at the top and looked slowly back and forth. As he searched for more monsters, she saw something shining on the ground by her foot. It was a pistol. The man must have dropped it. She picked it up gingerly. It was surprisingly heavy, though it wasn't very big. She held it with both hands, close to her chest. _Just in case._ She looked around the corner again.

And there, creeping up behind the man on the hill, was another of the huge black animals. How something that big could be so quiet was beyond her. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and she saw that it was going to reach the man before he saw it. Taking a deep breath, she raised the pistol. She felt a pinprick on her arm, under her Pip-Boy, and the world seemed to slow to a crawl. She could see the behemoth clearly, as though she were standing right next to it. She aimed carefully at its slowly bobbing head, and pulled the trigger. She saw the bullet fly through the air and through the thing's head. A splash of blood spurted out the other side, droplets falling in slow motion. The man whipped around at the sound of her firing and brought up his own gun to finish it off. It groaned, and finally fell.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Though she'd only been awake a few hours, Lydia was exhausted again, and fairly collapsed into a pile of old laundry in the house. The corpselike man also set up camp in the meager shelter the half-a-house offered. Although he seemed mildly irritated at her presence, he no longer insisted that she leave, much to her relief. Her hitting the Yao Guai (as he had told her they were called) in the head from that far away had been mostly a fluke, and she doubted she could have repeated the performance even with the help of VATS. She didn't mention this to the man, since she suspected that her apparent skill was the only reason he'd permitted her presence. Although, he had taken her pistol away. She didn't know how he expected her to be of any use without it, but she didn't really care. If they ran into something that he couldn't fight off, she didn't think _she _would be able to.

She watched him go about his business. He dragged away the bodies of the Yao Guai and the people he'd killed, then sat down against the wall with his legs stuck straight out and crossed. He took out a cigarette and a matchbook.

"I'm Lydia," she said. He didn't reply. She watched as he struck a match and held it up to the cigarette. He had a very slow, precise way of moving. He tossed the match on the ground and put the rest back in his pocket. He glanced up to see her watching him. He gave her a hard, expressionless stare in return.

"What's your name?" Lydia pushed, squirming a bit under his gaze.

He rubbed a hand over his forehead in an exasperated gesture and looked off into the distance. "Harris."

The bodies of the people he'd killed were lying not far away. She could still see them. He ignored them completely. He may has well have just finished reading a particularly boring novel for all that he seemed to care about what he'd done. Would she invoke his wrath if she mentioned them?

She cleared her throat feebly and shifted her feet a bit. "Who were those people?" She cringed at the sound of her voice. It came out as more of a squeak than anything else.

"Raiders." he said, "They had it coming."

She didn't know what they could have done to deserve death. That seemed a little harsh no matter what they had done to 'have it coming'. She kept her thoughts to herself, though. "You know, you're the first Wastelander I've met," she told him. "Ever."

"What an honor," he deadpanned.

"Does everyone out here...um...look like you?"

"No."

"Oh. Um, are you sure you don't need any stimpaks?"

"I'm a ghoul. Stimpaks won't help."

"A ghoul?" she asked. "What does that mean?"

"It's a mutation. It happens to some of us in the Wasteland."

She observed him quietly. He didn't seem to feel either good or ill about his condition. "Does it hurt?"

He made a small sighing sound. "Please be quiet."

So Lydia quieted, settling into her pile of laundry. 'Ghoul' seemed like a strange term for a medical condition, even if it was slang. It sounded so insulting. She studied the man's face, as she had been doing for the past hour. If she had to guess, she'd say it was Cutaneous Radiation Syndrome. But she had no way to treat that, and even if she did, she doubted it would help him. He was too far gone. He could have passed for a zombie, for goodness sake. He looked like he should already be dead. _Like I should be_. She checked the time. She'd woken up next to the radioactive waste an hour and a half ago. She wondered how much longer she had.

They rested in the house for the remainder of the day, though as far as she could tell, Harris didn't sleep. Lydia drifted in and out of dreams. No matter how many times she woke up, she was always confused and dizzy for a few seconds upon opening her eyes and seeing the sky. It was blue and white now, like in the picture books she'd had when she was a kid. It looked so unnatural. She kept imagining that it was simply an enormous, painted ceiling, but according to her dad's encyclopedia, that was not the case. She was inclined to doubt the encyclopedia.

Finally, when the sun began setting, Harris stood up. As an afterthought, he brushed the dust off his pants.

"Where are you going?" Lydia asked.

"To find a trader."

"When are you coming back?"

"I'm not coming back."

"Oh... " Lydia deflated. She had realized by this point that she hadn't accounted for how dangerous the Wasteland was before she left the vault. From what she'd seen so far, she guessed that her chances of survival were roughly zero percent if she didn't have someone to help her.

The ghoul closed his eyes and exhaled almost imperceptibly. "If you want to come, you'd better change into some different clothes."

"Oh!" She remembered what he'd said about vault dwellers attracting attention. "Oh." She didn't have any non-vault-issued clothing, so she turned to the pile of laundry she'd been using as a bed. Much of the fabric was burned or so caked with dust that it had the rigidity of hard plastic, but she dug farther and found that the inside of the pile had been protected by the outside. She picked out a pair of jeans and a shirt that was stained to brownish white, but was wearable. She began to unzip her 101 suit, then paused and looked at Harris. He was leaning against the wall at the other end of the house, facing the other direction. She hurriedly changed, placing the vault suit in her backpack. She kept her own boots on.

It was weird wearing two separate articles of clothing. When she lifted her arms over her head, her stomach showed. It was probably a kid's shirt, but it fit well enough, although she had to keep the left sleeve bunched up to accommodate her Pip-Boy. She glanced at Harris again. He was wearing a flak jacket and army fatigue pants. He was a lot better protected than she was, but there wasn't anything in the laundry pile that would be much help against bullets or Yao Guai claws. She shrugged in resignation and threw her pack over her shoulders. At least she wouldn't get hot.

"So where are there traders?" she asked when she caught up to Harris.

He exhaled a wisp of smoke politely downwind of her and started walking, with Lydia on his heels. "They wander, but there's usually one camped out outside of Megaton. It's half a day north of here."

"Megaton? That's a city?"

"Yes."

Lydia was unable to contain the excitement that rose up like a bubble in her chest. "I've never seen a city before," she told him.

"I'll bet."

"What's it like? Is it from before the war?"

"No."

"Are there lots of people there?"

"What's 'a lot'?"

"I don't know. A hundred?"

"There are more than a hundred people in Megaton."

"How many more?"

"I have no idea."

"Well how big is it?"

"Be quiet."

Lydia pressed her lips together. Instead of speaking, she watched the horizon, squinting behind her sunglasses. The sun was setting and the sky glowed red. It was impressive. She wondered if sunsets were always like that, or if it was just today. It unnerved her just how much she didn't know about this place, the outside. In the vault, she'd always been the studious one. She'd thought she was well-read, and perhaps she was with things that concerned a vault citizen: engineering, computers, medicine... but she knew very little about the natural world (if a world this tragically altered by man could be considered natural). Not to mention that all the information she'd had about the outside world had been circa 200 years ago. What had happened since then was a mystery to those imprisoned in the vaults.

"You should probably know," Lydia said in between breaths. "I'm going to die."

"We're all going to die."

"No, I meant, I'm going to die soon," she said. "Radiation poisoning." He didn't seem interested, but she kept going anyway. "Last night I slept next to some kind of radioactive waste. My Pip-Boy says I absorbed a thousand rads." She shook her head in disappointment. "I'm an idiot."

"Sounds like it."

Lydia glared at his back and decided to stop sharing for the time being.

They walked for what seemed like a very long time. Soon the sun was down and the moon and stars were out again, and Lydia perched her sunglasses on top of her head. She was breathing hard before long and had to work to keep up with Harris, though he wasn't moving particularly quickly. He never broke his steady speed, and often outpaced her, at which point either he would stop and smoke while he waited for her, or she would jog until she'd caught up.

She couldn't tell whether he was annoyed at having to wait. He was hard to read. It made her a little nervous. Or, rather, it added to her already present nervousness.

Suddenly he stopped. Lydia was about to gratefully sit down when he seized her wrist and pulled her roughly to the left, behind a massive rock. She cried out in surprise and aggravation. "What are you doing?"

He shushed her and drew his rifle. She froze. He was going to kill her now? Why had he waited?

But then he turned his back to her and faced the edge of the boulder, waiting. It was quiet, and at first she sensed nothing. After a full minute she heard something. Voices, coming from the direction in which they had been traveling. They were very quiet at first, but slowly grew in volume, as did their footsteps.

"... so then I cut it off."

Someone laughed. "Good. That asshole was biggest pansy I ever seen. Couldn't take pain for shit."

"I know. He comes to _our_ camp wanting all of _my_ buffout, and whenever we go on a raid he's 'sick'. I'm glad he's gone."

The footsteps came to a stop as they neared the boulder. It sounded like they were just on the other side. Lydia held her breath. She did not want a confrontation with these people. There was a metallic rattling noise from the other side of the rock, and then hissing.

"Have you never fucking spray painted before?" asked the female voice. "You suck at this. Give it to me." There was short scuffle.

"Shit! Fine, just take it!" the other one pouted.

Harris chose this moment to explode out of his crouch and dart around the corner, so fast that he had already fired off several rounds before Lydia had even registered what was happening.

There were a couple half-screams, and then the sound of bodies hitting the ground. Lydia peeked around the edge of the rock. Of course, the two strangers lay in a pile on the ground, and Harris stood over them, the muzzle of his gun smoking a tiny bit.

He hadn't even given them a chance. It seemed wrong, but she decided not to point that out to him. "You killed them," she said flatly.

"Are you always so observant?" He bent to search the bodies as he had with the people yesterday. Lydia stepped closer. One of the people had a line of bullet wounds across his torso, and the other had been shot in the eye. There was a spatter of gore on the ground. She could just make out some bits of skull and brain in the pooling blood. They both had hair dyed unnatural colors and wore strange rags, like the people yesterday.

"More raiders?" she guessed. The ghoul nodded absently.

The girl raider's hand still grasped a can of spray paint. Lydia looked behind her at the rock and found streaks of bright red liquid, some of which wasn't blood.

"What were they doing?"

"Marking their territory. Raiders stick to groups, mostly. They must have just set up a camp near here, and they want to make sure everyone else knows that this is their spot."

"That's childish."

"Yes," he agreed, "but it's fine with me if they want to give me forewarning before I run into them." He finished searching the bodies, keeping a few objects that Lydia couldn't make out in the darkness. He pointed in the direction the raiders had come from. "There will be more out that way. We'll circle around to the left, and we should avoid them. It'll take a little longer, but it'll be less of an inconvenience than getting shot."

"You think we'd get shot?" she asked. "You took care of them, and those ones yesterday pretty easily."

He gave her an odd look then. "I wouldn't say 'easily'. But there would be more than two of them at their camp. Anyway, it's not my job to police the Wasteland. It's always better to avoid fights in the first place."

"I suppose," Lydia said.

For a while it was quiet, save their soft footsteps in the dirt and gravel. The silence was distracting to Lydia. She'd always found solace in the quiet of her room in the vault, when she got the chance to get away from her father and especially Amata, who seemed to follow her everywhere. Now that the hum of air vent fans and the echo of distant voices were gone, she almost missed them. The lack of noise only served to remind her how far from home she was, and gave her too much time to picture the bodies of those raiders who seemed to pop up in her mind whenever she closed her eyes.

She wondered what Amata would do now that she was gone. She felt a little bad about not telling her she was leaving. Lydia was pretty sure that she'd been her only friend, though Amata had definitely made more of an effort in that department than she had. Probably too much so. She had to hand it to her, though, she had saved her from a lot of beatings from the Tunnel Snakes by pulling the "Overseer's Daughter" card. It wasn't bad to have those kinds of connections. But she was kidding herself if she thought she could convince herself that that was the only reason she was friends with Amata. Though she hated to admit it, she missed her, too. Now she was alone out here, in this vast emptiness.

Well. Not quite alone.

She glanced up at the ghoul. "So... what are we doing when we get to Megaton?" she ventured.

"I'm selling my stuff," he said without turning around. "You're, hopefully, going to find a job and a cot at the common house so I don't have to babysit you anymore."

"Babysit?" Lydia said. "Excuse me, but I can take care of myself. I didn't ask you to do any favors for me."

"Oh?" He smirked over his shoulder. It was the most emotion she'd seen him show since she met him. "No, you're right. You just started following me _without_ asking. I'm sure you and your BB gun would be just fine on your own."

She felt her face flushing. She glowered at him, but said nothing.

Suddenly something whizzed past her head. She blinked. Then something slammed into her right tricep. She staggered and looked down at her arm. There was a large red stain growing on the fabric of her shirt. Then, as though she'd needed to see it to know it was there, the pain hit her. It was worse than anything she'd ever felt before. She wanted to scream or cry, but she just stood there, unable to move. She was vaguely aware of Harris saying something somewhere ahead of her. Then his face swam into view in front of her.

He paused, eyes wide, lips drawn tight across his teeth. No... he hadn't paused. It was the adrenaline. VATS was kicking in. The pain in her arm numbed, at least enough for her to concentrate on what was happening around her. She watched Harris's mouth moving. It formed the word, "run". Right. Running would be a good idea. Harris turned and ran at a snail's pace, at the same time drawing his rifle and shooting into the darkness at their right. She could just make out the shapes of the raiders coming toward them. Moonlight glinted off the metal bits of their armor and weapons. They were yelling something, but their words blurred together and she couldn't understand them.

Lydia followed Harris to the edge of a small ravine. Beyond the ledge was what looked like a village of makeshift sheds of scrap wood and metal. They slid down the slope and made their way over to them. Bullets pounded into the dirt near them, at half speed. They sprinted around the corner of one of the shacks, then another, then another, until they were inside a maze of crooked planks and corrugated metal sheets. They came to a stop in a dark corner.

"Stay here," Harris ordered her, giving her a look that said, 'This is serious business, do what I tell you or else'. The effect was lessened by his drawling slow motion voice. He ran off back the way they'd come and disappeared around the corner of the building.

Lydia crouched against the wall, breathing hard and twitching but trying to be unnoticeable. She looked around her metal alcove. Part of the wall was rusted through. She put an eye to the hole and saw that it led to the other side of the sheds she stood between. Dim shapes ran back and forth in her view. This went on for a while. She couldn't tell what was going on. Harris was nowhere to be seen. She guessed that he was hiding somewhere, in a good place to snipe from. From the sound of it, and the gradually diminishing number of people running past, he was winning.

The gunshots and shouting slowly became higher pitched-closer to normal speed-as the adrenaline began wearing off. She heard footsteps behind her. They were moving quickly, and getting closer. Whoever it was would be coming around the corner soon, and unless she was very lucky, they'd see her. Her eyes darted around and fell on a piece of rusted pipe that was protruding from the side of one of the buildings. She wrenched it free, tearing it away from a valve. It was heavier than it looked, and cold. She brought it up like a baseball bat, and the footsteps got faster and louder.

A large figure loomed into view. She saw a face smeared with dirt and paint, wild, red-rimmed eyes, and an ugly sneer. Not Harris. For fraction of a second, her eyes met his. They were alight with fury, insane delight, and surprise.

Lydia slammed the pipe into the side of the face as hard as she could. To her surprise the force of the hit sent both of them reeling. She hit the ground and quickly jumped back up, but the man she'd hit wasn't moving, and blood drizzled steadily from his wound.

More guns went off. She quickly returned to her corner and looked through the hole. Two people were left in the shootout. One knelt behind a small rock. The other stood behind one of the sheds, hopping from foot to foot and screaming obscenities. He lost patience and streaked toward the man behind the rock. He was promptly shot repeatedly. Lydia waited for more gunshots or footsteps, but it was silent. The man behind the rock, having also waited and listened, slowly stood and shouldered his rifle. He walked nonchalantly to the shot man and began searching his body. Of course. It _was_ Harris this time.

She sighed with relief. Her entire body sagged. She suddenly felt very tired. Now everything was going at normal speed. Although nothing much was moving, the world seemed to be spinning. Her arm throbbed with pain to remind her that she'd been shot. It was much worse now that VATS was wearing off. Her vision swam. She felt herself falling, and her vision went black before she hit the ground.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Lydia jerked awake. _Ouch._ Harris was kneeling beside her, holding an emptied stimpak. She was lying in a pile where she'd fallen. She realized he was talking to her.

"... bullet went straight through and out the other side of your arm. Should heal fine."

She lifted her head dizzily to look at her shot arm. As she watched, the hole in her skin shrank. "Thanks."

"Need another one?" Harris asked as he tossed the used stim aside.

The wound still hurt, but it was mostly healed and she didn't want to waste another stimpak. "No." She stood up unsteadily, and brushed herself off. She froze when she saw the man on the ground a few yards away. _Oh yeah._

The ghoul followed her gaze. "Looks like you got him with one hit."

"He's dead?"

"Yes."

Lydia felt sick. She averted her eyes, fixing them on Harris instead. "Are we almost to Megaton?"

He nodded. "You can see it from here." He lead her out of the little ramshackle city (Lydia edged carefully around the body) and pointed up a small incline. Something that looked a bit like a giant circus tent rose out of the hill some ways off. Harris said it was about a mile away. She took his word for it.

As they neared Megaton, she saw that what looked like the sides of the 'tent' were actually walls made of a jagged patchwork of scrap metal. It appeared to be one single wall, actually, that went around the entire city. Tiny lights attached to strings zigzagged between outcroppings of the wall.

Lydia was so absorbed in the sight that she jumped when Harris said, "They aren't here."

"What?"

"Trading caravans," he reminded her. "There aren't any here. It's probably too late. We'll have to go into the city and find someone there, instead." He didn't sound happy.

"Is that bad?"

"I prefer to do business outside the city. The caravans have better rates, anyway."

It hadn't occurred to Lydia that he wouldn't even have gone into the city with her. She was glad he was now. She refused to acknowledge that she was afraid to go into the city by herself, but to her dismay, that resolution didn't make the fear disappear. Harris had escorted her all the way here and saved her life twice. She was reluctant to part ways with the only person she'd met who hadn't tried to kill her.

As they approached, Lydia eyed a robot of a type she'd never seen before. It was shaped vaguely like a human, with exaggerated, spherical joints, a conical head, and three-fingered "hands". A Protectron. She remembered reading a description of it in a report on the terminal at home.

"Welcome... to... Megaton. Please... stand clear... of... the gate." The robot said in a mechanical voice.

There was a sudden screeching of metal on metal. Lydia threw her hands over her ears. Two large pieces of the city wall were being drawn up like a portcullis, revealing a sort of antechamber and an inner door to the town.

"Enjoy... your... stay, partner."

Harris gestured ahead of himself sarcastically. "Go ahead, 'partner'."

Giving him a small smile, she dragged open the door.

She stopped and stared.

She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but this wasn't it. She'd never seen anything so chaotic-not even her desk at school measured up to this. It was like a vertical variant of the raider camp. It looked as though it had been designed by a child or a crazy person (perhaps it was), made almost entirely of scrap metal placed disjointedly around to create crude walls and walkways. Buildings grew out of the ground at awkward angles, looking as though they would collapse on themselves any second.

_It makes sense. Harris said the city wasn't here before the bombs fell, so it had to have been made with scavenged materials. It probably started out as a small colony and just kept growing until it became... this. _

Although it was dark out, the town was very much alive. People gathered on paths and in front of establishments that must have been businesses, judging by the hand-written signs hanging on them, which were lit by more of the lights on strings that she'd seen outside.

"This is amazing," she murmured. Harris grunted noncommittally and went down a path to the right that followed the curve of the outer wall. Lydia followed close behind, not wanting to get lost. The place was a maze. A large shape in the pit at the center of the city caught her eye. "Is that-is that a bomb?"

"Why do you think it's called 'Megaton'?" Harris said over his shoulder.

"But what is it _doing_ here?"

"An airplane crashed here during the war," he said. "There was an atomic bomb on board. The people of Megaton used the wreckage of the plane to build the city, and the bomb was left over."

"And it never went off?" Lydia asked in astonishment.

Harris gave her an incredulous look.

"Right. I guess not."

They turned onto a rickety metal ramp that creaked as they stepped on it. Two women leaned on a railing, deep in conversation. As Harris and Lydia rounded the corner and came into their view, they went silent. The women glared at them. Lydia grew faintly uncomfortable. She was used to people at school looking at her that way, but what could these people, who she didn't even know, have against her? Was it because she was a stranger?

As she was thinking this, one of the women drew back, summoned a wad of phlegm, and spat into Harris's face. Lydia gaped, speechless.

Harris had no particularly strong reaction to this. He halted in surprise and regarded the woman expressionlessly.

"Megaton only needs one zombie," she said, resting her elbows on the railing behind her.

Harris raised a hand to his cheek and wiped the saliva off, flicking his wrist to shake it off onto the metal walkway. He continued down the path without a word.

The women laughed. "Even one's too much. He stinks up the whole bar." Lydia turned to follow Harris, but the other woman grabbed her arm. "Hey. Necrophilia is a sin, you know," she said seriously. Lydia jerked her arm out of her grip, resisting the urge to hit her. She hastened to Harris's side. The women's now quieter voices carried to her. She caught the words "disgusting" and "pathetic". She felt her face reddening.

"Hey," she said to Harris. "What was that about?" He didn't look at her. She ran in front of him to block his way. "I know I'm small, but I'm not completely useless. I've been in a fight before."

"What are you talking about?"

"We could have taken them!"

"What would have been the point of that?" Above them, a cloud moved away from the full moon. Harris watched it as he spoke, looking like he was thinking about something else. "I know you're new to the Wasteland, so I'll explain something to you. If I took a swing at them, they'd pull out a weapon-probably a gun-then I'd pull out mine, and if we didn't kill each other right off, the commotion would attract someone else who would." He looked at her. "Do you see how this works?"

So this was different than with the raiders. "Uh... "

He turned away from her to enter a building with a large sign above it that read _Craterside Supply_. Lydia caught the door and followed him in.

The first thing she noticed was the yellow cast of the sodium lights, which starkly contrasted with the other lights she'd seen in her life-the lighting in the vault was mercilessly white. The second thing she noticed was the acrid chemical smell that emanated from somewhere in the back of the shop. The third thing she noticed was the tall red-haired woman who looked up from her terminal screen at the creak of the door opening. "Oh, hey!" she said cheerfully. "I was just about to close up shop, but it can wait a few minutes." She got up, dusted her hands off, and went to stand behind a counter that was littered with oily tools and stained papers. "What can I do for you?"

_Well. That's a nice change from the people outside. _

Harris hefted his pack onto the counter and began taking out scavenged miscellany: everything from firearms (of these, Lydia recognized the pistol she'd used to shoot the Yao Guai) to broken electronics to scrap metal. He spoke briefly to the woman, working out prices for all the objects. Lydia watched the process with interest. The concept of owning things and being completely in charge of your own assets was odd to her. In the Wasteland, people didn't have the vault stockpile to rely on in hard times. On the other hand, they had the opportunity to become infinitely more wealthy depending on how much work they did. But then, 'wealthy' out here didn't mean the same thing it did in 101, did it? Most of these people didn't even seem to be able to afford a working shower.

Eventually they had separated out everything the woman was willing to buy from what she wasn't, and she handed the ghoul a few bags of bottlecaps and some 5.56mm rounds (Lydia recognized the same kind of clips that Harris used for his assault rifle). The only items left in his bag were some odd-looking inhalers and a few dirty glass bottles of what Lydia guessed was liquor. "You can probably sell the rest at Moriarty's," she said in the bubbly voice that seemed to be usual for her (Lydia suspected it didn't matter what the topic of conversation was). "They sure do like their chems over there... " Having finished business, she stared off into space for a moment, then picked up a broom and began sweeping the floor (a bit of a lost cause, Lydia thought), murmuring to herself.

As Harris went to the door, he said, "Thanks, Moira."

The woman straightened up. "Oh! Have we met?" She tilted her head thoughtfully.

"Yes, Moira, we've met."

"Oh! Then it was great to see you again." She grinned in a way that made her eyes and nose crinkle up. Lydia waved to her, but she had already resumed sweeping and didn't see her.

They stepped out into the night, and Lydia stopped. The first thing she saw as she left the building were the thousands of stars in the deep black of the sky. She'd forgotten to prepare herself again for the strange sight. Now it loomed above her like an enormous gaping maw. She leaned against the door to steady herself. The solidity of the metal against her back was reassuring.

Harris was going up the hill to the right of the store. Lydia pushed herself off the wall. She waited for a moment to make sure she wouldn't fall, then hurried after him.

They wound their way around a few more buildings before they reached their next destination, a building that looked slightly more sturdy than Moira's. Two signs hung above the doorway, both reading "Moriarty's Saloon". Lydia supposed that the larger one was for viewing from the other side of the city and the smaller one was to remind drunkards where they were if they found their way outside the bar. Harris pulled open the heavy door, and immediately the warm, heavy smell of too many people in too small a space hit them. It was loud and crowded inside, and Lydia couldn't see much over the heads of everyone. As she brushed past people (which wasn't difficult; they gave Harris a wide berth), she was unnerved at how many of them had guns attached to themselves someplace or another. It seemed like a bad idea to have that much ammunition anywhere, let alone in a drinking establishment.

They made their way to the bar, and behind it was a ghoul who Lydia thought looked rather like Harris. Maybe it was just that all ghouls looked the same to non-ghouls. He was pouring drinks with a practiced hand that said he'd been doing it for a long time. Since it was so busy it took him a while to even notice they were there, but Harris waited patiently. He finally looked in their direction.

"What can I get-oh, hey, Harris. It's been a while."

"Hi, Gob. I just need to unload some scotch. I'll trade you straight across for stimpaks, if you have them." The other ghoul, Gob (_what a weird name)_, nodded, and Harris once again began sorting out his goods. Lydia took this time to let her eyes wander around the bar.

A woman with a shock of bright orange hair and a short denim dress leaned against a wall, smirking at no one in particular. Her half lidded eyes caught Lydia's. The woman winked and smiled just bit wider at her. Lydia blinked and looked away. Her eyes fell on a particularly repellent-looking man seated at the other end of the bar, facing her. He was staring at her. He swayed back and forth slightly; probably an effect of the half empty bottle he clutched. Lydia glared back at him. _What are you looking at?_

She broke her death glare with man to return her gaze to the ghoul behind the counter. He'd been staring at her, and he jumped slightly when she looked back at him.

"Um...can I get you something?"

"No, thanks."

Gob nodded once, almost suspiciously.

"She's with me," Harris explained.

Gob gave her an appraising look. Lydia scratched the back of her neck. Harris leaned over the bar and said something quietly to Gob that Lydia couldn't hear over the din in the room. Whatever he said made Gob looked at her almost sympathetically. Lydia frowned. He told him she was from a vault? She didn't need their pity, whatever it was for. "I'm going to wait outside," she told them.

"I'll take you to the common house when I'm done with this," Harris said to her. That brought a pang of apprehension, but she nodded and scooted out the door.

She was confronted with the sky again, but this time she was prepared. She drank in the size of it. This was why she'd left the vault. She couldn't keep wasting time being afraid of it. _You're finally here, now enjoy it. _She leaned on the railing of the walkway, which moved dangerously under her weight. There was a flash of light as the door to the saloon opened behind her. She turned to look, shielding her eyes. The light disappeared as the man in the doorway closed it behind him. She realized it was the weird guy who'd been staring at her inside. He stood there, watching her. He didn't say anything.

"Yes?" she snapped.

He stared. He was still swaying from side to side, though the bottle was gone from his hand.

"What?"

Suddenly he rushed forward and something hit her, making her double over. There was a blur of motion and she felt the man's arms wrapping around her. After an second of disorientation, she realized he was carrying her awkwardly, and quickly, away from the bar. She kicked wildly, but she was at such an angle that she couldn't reach him with her feet.

"Let go of me!" She slapped at his arms desperately. He shifted them so that his forearm was across her face, muffling her voice. She twisted violently back and forth, in vain; he only held her tighter. They came to a brief stop in front of a door. The man kicked it open, stepped inside and threw her against a wall. Her head slammed against the metal and she fell to the floor. There was a sharp pain in her forehead. Ignoring it, she turned, still on the floor, and kicked out at his shin as hard as she could. The man swore and staggered back. Lydia drew her foot back to kick again while he was in shock, but then he reached behind him, drew an assault rifle from his back, and trained it on her head. She stopped, foot still poised in midair. He was too drunk to be able to aim properly, but at this distance it wouldn't matter.

The man paused there, moving heavily as he breathed hard. He held the gun at his hip with one hand, and ran the other over his buzzed hair. "Fuckin' bitches," he muttered, and Lydia wondered if it was directed at her or if he was just talking to himself. He crouched over her and the end of the rifle pushed against her side. "All think you're too goddamn good for me." He leaned down close to her, exhaling a puff of hot, alcohol-tainted breath. Lydia had a strong urge to knee him in the groin, but the rifle in her side, and the itchy trigger finger behind it, stopped her.

He slid a hand up her shirt. She envisioned herself dashing past the man, running to the back of the house to find a back door or window, screaming for help, finding some kind of weapon... anything. Her limbs tensed as though in preparation to act, but fear held her in place. Her heart pounded in her ears, and something pulsed in her veins like electricity. _Do something. Do anything._

As Lydia tried to avoid looking at the man's face, she saw a change in the light in the room. The man blocked her view of the doorway, but she saw the shadow rise up behind him. The floor made a small creak, which caught the man's attention. He grunted and an irritated look crossed his face. As he turned to look behind him, there were two quick footsteps and then something swept down and hit the side of his head, knocking him sideways. He slumped over next to Lydia and didn't move.

She looked up cautiously. Perhaps it was just lingering panic, but for an instant the figure was terrifying. He stood, towering ominously above her, a living corpse silhouetted against the single light bulb hanging above him. In one hand was an empty glass bottle that, surprisingly, had not broken on impact with her aggressor's head.

Then Harris crouched down to look at her face-to-face, and the moment was gone. She realized she was holding her breath, and let it out shakily. She'd didn't think she had ever been so glad to see someone.

"You're bleeding," he told her.

She looked at her arm, which was throbbing. Her shirt had a large red splotch on it, but it was dry-leftover from earlier. Then her forehead stung, and she remembered hitting her head. She gingerly touched her fingers to it, and they came away red.

She looked at the man on the ground, and she felt like she might faint.

"Please don't leave me here," she whispered.

Harris just shook his head. His face was unreadable. "Come on."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter ****4**

When they got outside the city, Lydia got a bandage from her pack and quickly wrapped it around her head a few times after cleaning the wound with an alcohol wipe. Neither of them said anything else about what had happened, and they traveled for the next several days in relative silence. A few times they ran into small animals, but nothing overly dangerous. Harris easily dealt with the aggressive ones with his assault rifle. Lydia followed him wordlessly, watching their surroundings. As she tramped up the umpteenth hill of brown and grey dry grass and concrete bits, she realized with some dismay that she was already getting tired of them. The scenery was harder to enjoy when the majority of her body was screaming in pain, whether from wounds or overexertion.

The lengthy silence gave her mind time to wander, and she contemplated her radiation level. She went to sleep every night expecting to not wake up again (and thinking that that wouldn't be an entirely horrible thing), and each morning she was surprised to open her eyes again. Maybe it was all a hallucination and she didn't really sleep in that irradiated area_. _She checked the health status screen of her Pip-Boy. _No such luck. And I'm too tired to figure out how in the world this is possible. _

They had initially been traveling at night, but their schedule didn't seem to be consistent. Lydia just got up and went to sleep whenever Harris did. She was always exhausted from walking all day no matter how long she slept, anyway. If it hadn't been for her Pip-Boy, she would easily have lost track of time.

One night Harris and Lydia sat and ate next to a cliff under a small outcropping. They usually camped in a similar type of location. Lydia guessed it was for strategical reasons. She slowly chewed a bite of snack cake, thinking how ashamed her father would be at her eating cake for dinner. She felt a little guilty, but she didn't have many other options food-wise. She had run out of the food she'd brought from the vault yesterday, so Harris gave her some of his. His stock of food consisted of a few prepackaged meals and a lot of gross-looking meat jerky that was probably horribly irradiated. It had occurred to her that either she was somehow immune to radiation poisoning or would be dead soon anyway and it didn't matter whether was exposed to more radiation. She'd opted for the prepackaged stuff anyway.

Finishing her cake, Lydia set the leftover packaging to the side and touched her forehead gingerly. It didn't hurt anymore, but had itched for the past three days and she hadn't been able to resist scratching it. She undid the dressing and ran a hand over the cut. She could feel where it was by the raised skin, but it was scabbed over. It seemed to be healing fine. However, there were some irregularities in the skin beside the cut, like a rash. Probably from the bandage rubbing when she scratched it. She pressed on it with her palm, trying to make the itch go away without actually scratching and making it worse. For a infinitesimal moment she anticipated Amata's voice telling her to stop, before she remembered that her she wasn't there. She recalled her doing the same thing when she'd had chicken pox, years ago. They were only kids, but even then Amata had already assumed the maternal role. She had even moreso after Lydia's father was killed. It had annoyed her a little, to have her always hovering, always mothering, but it was something that was undeniably Amata. It was almost endearing. And maybe having some extra parenting hadn't hurt her all that much.

And now here she was, wandering aimlessly in the Wasteland, narrowly avoiding death on a regular basis, with nothing but what she'd been able to carry out of the vault, alone except for a practical stranger. To her horror, her eyes welled up with tears and a lump rose in her throat. She covered her face with her hands and held her breath, trying to keep herself from sobbing. _Where were you to prevent me from doing _this_, Amata? You nag me about all the stupidest things for all the time you know me, but when I decide to make the dumbest mistake of my life and leave the vault to venture into this atomic wasteland, you aren't there to stop me. _Her shoulders shook involuntarily. She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried. She sat that way for a few minutes, crying silently, unable to stop. After a while she stopped shaking and just sat with her face buried in her hands.

She wiped her face, sniffing once. Harris was staring at her, wide-eyed. When she looked at him, he quickly averted his gaze and fumbled for a cigarette.

Lydia's face burned. What was she thinking? She couldn't _stand_ Amata. It seemed like she'd spent all her time in the vault trying to avoid her, to no avail. _What is wrong with me? _She sniffed again and rubbed her itching forehead. This was pathetic. She'd been this way for the past three days, she realized-three days of walking, zombified. She didn't even know where they were going or why. She had learned and seen nothing new. She may as well have been back in the vault.

Afraid that her voice would creak if she tried to talk, she instead curled up on her side, hugged her pack, and closed her eyes.

She awoke to the sun in her face. After her usual moment of surprise, she retrieved her sunglasses and donned them. She looked around the makeshift camp. There was a scuffed area in the dirt where Harris had slept, but the ghoul himself was nowhere to be seen. A wave of panic shot through her. He'd finally gotten sick of her and left. She shouldn't have cried like that. She jumped up and ran out beyond the outcropping. "Harris?"

"I'm right here, you don't have to yell."

She turned to where his voice was coming from. He was standing on the cliff above where they had slept. She was immediately embarrassed at how much alarm must have shown in her voice. "How'd you get up there?"

"Climbed."

"Why?"

"Scouting." He climbed down the steep rock face, expertly placing his feet in crevices that were invisible from Lydia's point of view. He dropped onto the flat outcropping and then to the ground in front of her, landing much more gracefully than she would have. "We can go now."

She hurried to gather her backpack, and followed him along the side of the cliff. Making an effort to be less passive about what they were doing, she asked, "Where are we going?"

"Underworld," Harris replied. "And we'll have to stop somewhere on the way to try and find more food for you."

"Underworld? What's that?"

"A ghoul city downtown."

"There are whole cities of ghouls?" Lydia asked in surprise. This actually sounded pretty interesting. Judging by the number of ghouls she had met so far, she'd guessed that they only composed a small fraction of the population.

"There's really just the one around here."

"Huh. They called it 'Underworld'?"

"The place was already called that. It's an old museum exhibit. 'A tour through the land of the dead' or something."

Lydia didn't know if it would be rude to laugh or not. At least whoever had founded the place had a sense of humor. "Is that where you live?"

"No."

She waited for him to elaborate, but he offered nothing. "Then why are we going there?" she pressed.

"You don't have to come if you have a problem with it."

"What?" She looked at him, confused. He looked sternly straight ahead. _A problem with being around that many ghouls, he means. A little sensitive, are we?_ "That's not what I meant," she said. The last thing she wanted him thinking was that she was a bigot. "I was just wondering what we're doing."

He shrugged. "It's just another trading outpost. Most of the people there don't leave the city much, so they rely on me and a few other people to bring back things like food and medicine."

"That's nice of you."

"It's not like I give them the stuff for free."

"Still, downtown is pretty far out of the way, isn't it?"

"I guess."

Lydia scratched at her side. They walked a while longer before a thought came to her. She said, "Hey, you know those women we saw in Megaton?"

He didn't ask which ones she was talking about. "Yeah?"

"Are there... I mean, there aren't people like that in Underworld, are there? Like, ghouls who hate regular people?" She winced. "Non-ghouls, I mean?"

"There are some people like that. But I don't think you're going to get spat on for being a smoothskin, if that's what you're asking."

"Oh. Good," she said lamely. " 'Smoothskin'? That's what ghouls call us?"

"Most do, yeah."

Lydia shook her head to herself.

It was some time before she saw the outline of a building on the horizon. It stood out plainly, since there weren't many other landmarks around. A tall sign next to the building read "Mama's Food Mart" in fancy script. Next to the words was a woman's smiling face, but that piece was falling off the edge of the sign, hanging sideways.

As they neared the door, Harris slowed and drew his assault rifle, hanging it by his side with the strap over his shoulder. He peeked into a boarded-up window, then motioned for Lydia to stand to the side of the door. She moved to the right and stood behind him. He pushed the door open, standing to the side so he wasn't silhouetted in the doorway. He waited, but nothing happened. Lydia craned her neck to look around him, but it was too dark inside to see much.

Harris quickly looked around the doorframe, then ran inside. Lydia stayed behind, but watched closely from the door. He was behind a row of shelves, scanning the aisles. Finally he put up his rifle, satisfied that there was nothing else hiding out in the store.

Lydia went inside. "Are you always that dramatic? It's like watching a spy movie."

"Better safe than sorry."

"Well, you don't have to do that again. My Pip-Boy can detect heat signatures, so I can see if there are other robots or living things around. Sometimes it gets confused with big computers and thinks they're robots, but other than that it works."

Harris turned and stared at her.

"What?"

"It would have been nice to know that about four days ago. Like when we ran into that raider camp. That would have been fantastic, actually."

Lydia shuffled her feet. "I know. But I just remembered it. Just now."

Harris made a disgusted noise.

"I'm sorry! I-sorry. I'm just not used to having to think about things like that. The only time I used it in the vault was when I sneaked out after curfew."

"Is there anything else I should know, before we go on?"

Lydia thought. "Just VATS. Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. When we're under extreme stress, like in a life-or-death situation, the Pip-Boy injects us with this solution-epinephrine and something else, I don't know what. But it makes everything seem really slow, and it makes it easier to aim and to decide where to aim. That's how I hit that Yao Guai a couple days ago. I'm really not a great shot, but VATS helps. There's also a GPS and a feature that automatically maps terrain within a fifty yard radius."

Harris nodded. "Anything else?"

Lydia started to shake her head, then stopped. "I also have medical training. My dad was the vault doctor and I was one of his assistants. I took his place after he and Jonas... It's a long story, but I took his place." She paused. "I'm okay at picking locks, and anything electronic. That's all."

"Quite the useful little vault dweller, aren't you?"

"I'll try to be."

"Fine. You can start by helping me find some food. Don't suppose you have a nutritious material detector on that thing, too?"

Lydia rolled her eyes and started down an aisle. There were some boxes and cans on the shelves, and they were so dusty that she had to wipe them off before she could see what they contained. There were Mama's brand vitamin supplements (she took some of these), Abraxo Scouring Powder, a watering can shaped like a flower, some "Nuka Wheels" car toys (contained small parts and were not recommended for children under three), but no food. She zigzagged through the other aisles with similar results. "There's nothing here," she said aloud when she had circled around to where she started.

"Keep looking," Harris called back.

She went back through the store in the same route, this time digging through the mess on the floor as she went. There was a box of melted popsicles in the freezer section. The sugar had glued the box to the ground, and the cardboard label peeled off when she tried to pry it up.

Eventually she found three boxes of mac and cheese on the floor kicked under a metal shelf. She wiped the dust off of them and was about to return to the front of the store when a can on another shelf caught her eye. She picked it up. It had a cartoon dog on it. Pet food. She made a face, but put it in her pack. She didn't have to eat it, and she might be sorry later if she was hungry and didn't have anything else.

Next to the can of food was a black box with a metal dish attached. Lydia's eyes lit up when she saw it. She grabbed it, and there was flash of light that blinded her. She waited for the colored spots in her vision to disappear, then went for the box again, more carefully. It was heavy, so she let it hang from her neck by a strap that protruded from the top of the box. On one side a piece of paper slid out. She took it. It was still developing, but she could see a blurry, sideways picture of herself reaching for the camera. "Harris," she called. "Look what I found."

She took the camera to the opposite side of the store, holding it up to her face to look through the viewfinder. Harris's face came into view. "Smile!" (He didn't.) She depressed the shutter release and the camera flashed. He blinked at the light. Lydia took the photo that popped out of the side of the box. The image crept into view. "Look." She held it up for him to see, and he gave it a disinterested glance.

"Neat." He handed her two packages of snack cakes. "Find anything else?"

She nodded. "Three mac and cheeses." She put the cakes in with them, and shouldered the pack. "This will last until we find some more, don't you think?"

"Yes."

"How long will it take to get to Underworld, anyway?" she asked.

"It's a week or so off yet. We're not going straight there; I've got other stops to make."

Lydia sighed. More walking. Tucking the two photos into her pocket, she said, "Alright. Let's get going, then."


	5. Chapter 5

_A reminder, for the sake of clarity: the Enclave sees all Wastelanders as mutants, or at least less than human. So, no, I'm not trying to say that this group goes around asking super mutants for directions, though that does conjure an amusing image. _

_Oh, yeah, and this [-lll-] denotes scene/pov change. Stupid FFN won't let me just do dashes, so I have to put in that silly looking thing instead. Oh well. _

_

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_

**Chapter 5**

"I was meant for better things."

Carmen didn't look up from her notebook. "Sergeant isn't bad, Amanda."

"No, it's not." They were in a small office. Her legs were set against the top of Carmen's desk, and she rocked backwards and forwards in her chair, lifting the front legs off the ground. "So why are they still sending me on pointless wild goose chases for some escaped vault rat?"

"This time is different," the woman at the desk said. "It isn't a cold call. Vault 101 just opened for the first time in 20 years, and we know someone left. All we have to do is find them before they go back inside. And it's not pointless. I wrote my thesis on the Vault Behavioral Project. This is important data."

Amanda rolled her eyes. "Right. Well I've had about all the data gathering I can take. I'm sick of wandering around asking a bunch of damn mutants if they've seen somebody in a vault suit go by. Don't blame me if I go berserk and slug somebody at some point during this mission."

"Again, you mean?"

Amanda stopped rocking. "You know about that?"

"Everyone knows about that. When are we leaving?"

"Tomorrow. Our escapee is somewhere between Vault 101 and Megaton. God, I hope he doesn't make us chase him in there. What a piss hole."

"Who are you taking, aside from myself?"

"Lopez and Jacobsen."

"It's only the four of us?"

"No. They want me to break in that new recruit, too. The one from the outside. You met him yet?"

"Robert Kline. I did his psychological evaluation when he first showed up."

"And?"

She finally looked up. "He was polite enough, and eager. Maybe a bit slow. I couldn't find any reason not to let him join. I don't know, though. There was something strange about him."

"He can be as strange as he wants to as long as he doesn't fuck anything up. I want to be done with this."

Someone cleared their throat loudly from the doorway. Amanda turned to look and nearly fell backwards out of the chair. "Captain!" She leapt to her feet and saluted.

The man in the doorway frowned, making the lines on his face look even deeper than they were. He stood ramrod straight with his hands clasped behind his back. "Keeping busy, I see. Aren't you supposed to be preparing for tomorrow's mission, Hale?"

"Yes, sir. I was just briefing Freeman, here."

"Perhaps your briefs should be more brief." He allowed a tiny smirk at his own joke. "This isn't break time. I know you have more useful things to do with your time."

"Yes, sir."

He left, and Amanda waited there a long time, until she was sure he was out of earshot. She turned back to Carmen. "_Your briefs should be more brief_," she repeated. "Asshole."

Carmen smiled at her. "You'd better go."

"Yeah. Whatever _mon capitan_ wishes. Be ready at 0700 hours tomorrow."

Carmen nodded absently, already reabsorbed in her notes.

In another room not far away, Robert Kline pondered his position. It had been easy enough to get them to think he was a harmless idiot. From what he could tell, that was already their opinion of most everyone who wasn't Enclave. The problem was that even though they occasionally agreed to let them in, they didn't allow outsiders to ascend through the ranks, which meant he'd never be able to get any useful tactical information. He'd also probably be stuck at this facility forever. He had already looked around and seen no technology they didn't already have.

He heard footsteps, then that nasty Hale woman appeared in the doorway. Placing his thoughts on hold, he put on his dumb Wastelander face and turned to greet her.

-lll-

Their first stop was a house in the middle of nowhere (as many things out here seemed to be). It was practically a mansion, obviously of pre-war make. There was assorted junk littering the front lawn (if you could call it a lawn). Lydia started toward the door, but Harris put a hand on her shoulder.

"Wait," he said.

Lydia stood in place as he went forward slowly, scanning the ground. He stepped over clumps of grass until he was about three fourths of the way to the door, then suddenly stopped. He edged back sideways, watching a spot on the ground all the while.

"What?" Lydia asked as he reached her.

He ran a hand over the ground, picked up a rock he found, and lobbed it with care to a spot near front porch of the house. It bounced and rolled into a pile of scrap wood. There was a pause. Nothing was happening. Lydia had just opened her mouth to say so... when it exploded. She yelped and jumped behind Harris, who hadn't moved. Splinters of wood rained down on the house and the ground next to it, and there was a black, smoking scorch mark in the dirt where it had been.

"Land mine," Harris informed her. She could hear the smile in his voice.

"Ha-ha." Lydia said without humor. She straightened and crossed her arms. "You could have warned me. What was that doing there, anyway?"

Before he could answer, the front door of the house banged open, and a huddled figure appeared on the porch. It leveled a rifle at them. Lydia leapt back behind Harris.

"You've got five seconds to get the hell off my lawn before I blow your head off," the man roared. "One, two-"

"It's me," Harris interrupted. "I've got your jet. Do you want it or not?"

The man in the doorway paused. "Harris?" He lowered the rifle slightly, then raised it back up when Lydia poked her head up over Harris's shoulder. "Who the hell is that?"

"A friend. She's with me."

The barrel of the rifle was shaking slightly, waving back and forth. It reminded her of the way the man in Megaton had weaved side to side in the bar, and she shuddered.

"I've got other things to do," Harris said. "If you don't want it, I'll leave."

"No!" The man cried, putting down the rifle. "I want it. Just-bring it over here. That was the only mine, I think."

Lydia followed Harris hesitantly to the porch. She would have preferred to stay away from the unstable looking person, but she doubted that it was safer to stay behind by herself. The man in the doorway stood shuffling his feet and blinking compulsively. He was quite tall and thin, but was stooped over so much that his face was nearly level with hers. He eyed Lydia suspiciously.

"I asked you to stop putting out mines," Harris said. He put his rucksack on the splintering wooden deck and dug through it.

"You were late," the man retorted, and his head suddenly snapped back behind him as though he'd heard something inside the house. He stared inside for a moment, then turned back to them. "I didn't know when you'd be coming. And I've been seeing them more, those black armored guys."

"The Enclave? What are they doing out here?"

"Looking for me, I bet. I thought if maybe, I just put out _one_ mine, it wouldn't be so bad, and it might scare them away... "

"They're not looking for you," Harris assured him.

"How do you know? I can tell. I can tell. Why do you think they keep coming around here, anyway?" He snatched the inhalers out of Harris's hand and retreated back inside, slamming the door behind him. Then he opened it back up a tiny bit and stuck his head out. "Bring the same amount next time. And come on time. Here." He held out a bag of caps, shaking his hand vigorously as though to make Harris take them faster. He slammed the door again as soon as Harris accepted them. Then the door opened yet again. "Do you got any more mines? I just ran out, thanks to you."

Harris shook his head, smirking. The man growled and slammed the door shut, making the porch shake precariously.

Lydia didn't move at first, stunned by the short exchange. Harris picked up the caps without bothering to count them. He was impassive, as usual, his deteriorated face betraying nothing. He looked bored, if anything. "So you're a chem dealer?" she asked.

"I deal a lot of things, not just chems."

"Uh-huh." They left the way they came, moving slowly and watching for mines on the way. "That guy didn't look very healthy."

"I very highly doubt he is."

"You don't care, do you?"

"Not particularly."

"I see. Where's our next stop?"

He jerked a chin to the southwest. They walked for the rest of the day. They finally stopped a few hours after the sun had set. Lydia's legs were killing her, but she thought she was starting to get used to all the walking. At least, she didn't feel like she was going to keel over at the end of the day anymore. As was growing to be their routine, Harris chose a spot to stop, notified her that they were staying there for the night, and she instantly sprawled on the ground. He lit a cigarette, and she stared at the sky. It was clear, giving her a view of the now smaller moon and thousands of stars. It seemed as unfathomably huge as always. It still scared her a little.

"Why did you leave your vault?" Harris asked suddenly.

The question caught Lydia off guard. Usually when he spoke it was just to tell her to walk or stop or wake up or go to sleep. She didn't think he'd ever initiated conversation with her. "Why do you ask?"

He just shrugged.

She thought carefully before replying. "Do you know what a light year is?"

He blew a cloud of smoke in the air, then spoke in his gravelly voice. "No."

"It's a measure of distance. How far light can travel in an entire year. Those stars are light years away. Because it takes so long to reach us, the light that we see in them now is actually from hundreds, even thousands of years ago. Some of the stars we're looking at now are long dead. So, when we look at the sky, we're looking back in time. We learned that in ninth grade. That was when I decided to leave. It was this sort of epiphanic moment. Probably sounds kind of stupid, I guess." She waited for him to reply, but he was silent.

"It wasn't just the stars, either..." she went on. Harris was quiet as she gained momentum, spilling out everything that had happened in the vault. She told him how she was always reading about the outside world, about things she'd never get to see, and how they all took it for granted that they would live out their lives in safety underground, behind that metal portal, sheltered from not only nuclear fallout and the demise of civilization, but from the real world-the world that they were meant to experience, no matter how inhospitable it had become in the past 200 years. Until that day. It was the first time it had really occurred to her to simply leave.

At first she spoke haltingly when she got to the part about her father trying to escape the next year. As she went on, describing how she'd simply woken up one day to Amata telling her that the guards had killed him and Jonas, she found her voice getting louder and louder and her tone increasingly bitter. "The Overseer said it was an accident," she said, "but everyone knew he was lying. He usually was."

She talked about how she'd began planning after that, learning to hack the terminals and pick locks, and spending a lot of time sneaking around after curfew, gathering information about the outside and practicing shooting."Not that it's helped much. Would you believe I was actually one of the best shots in the vault? I'm still terrible compared to you.

"I was still going to class, and at that time I was the only person there who knew anything about medicine, so I also worked as the vault doctor. I didn't have much free time, so it took three years for me to figure out how and when to get out, and to prepare and work up the courage to go." She combed a hand through her hair, which she realized was very dirty. She hadn't showered since she'd left 101. Harris had shown her how to brush her teeth with charcoal they found, so at least her teeth weren't going to rot out of her mouth, but there still weren't many opportunities to bathe the rest of her. A few hairs came out and clung to her hand as she pulled it through, and she shook them off with distaste. "That was less than a week ago, when I finally did it. It's weird, it seems like it's been so long already."

"No one came with you?" Harris asked.

"I didn't tell anyone I was leaving." She laid her head on her knee as she dragged her fingers idly through the dirt. "I never really thought about whether anyone else would want to leave. If they did, they probably wouldn't have wanted to come with me." She smiled ruefully. "I wasn't very popular."

"There are plenty of people who would kill to get into that vault."

He was probably right. Guaranteed food, water, shelter, and medical care, and no radiation or crazy mohawked people who tried to kill you on sight. It must have sounded like heaven to people out here. "Would you?"

"Doesn't sound like it would be worth it." He noticed the long ash on his neglected cigarette and tapped it off.

"What about you?" Lydia asked as she sat up. "What's your story?"

"Nothing so dramatic as all that."

"Oh, come on," she urged. "You're telling me that in all your time in the Wasteland, nothing more interesting has happened to you than what happened to me in that glorified underground petri dish?"

He smiled a little bit at that. "What, exactly, do you want to know?"

She thought. There wasn't much that she knew about him other than he was some kind of professional scavenger, and he was deadly with a gun. Might as well start with the basics. "How old are you?"

"That's not a very interesting question."

Lydia rolled her eyes. "It is to me."

"It's 2277, right?"

"You don't know what year it is?"

"That's why I asked."

"Yeah, it's 2277."

"Then I'm 41."

"Huh." _Not as old as Dad. Still pretty old, though. _"How did you become a ghoul?"

"Overexposure to radiation, same as everyone else. I don't think I ever encountered a particularly strong source, but when you live out here and don't have a geiger counter, it's hard to avoid, and it builds up after a while."

She nodded. "So when did you change?"

"It's usually a gradual process. For me it took about a year. But it started when I was sixteen."

Lydia's eyes widened. _So young? That means he's been a ghoul for longer than I've been alive._ She watched him take one last drag on his cigarette, then stab the butt into the ground to put it out. He exhaled out of his scant nose, and tendrils of smoke floated out. It made him look quite demonic. Lydia felt another question rising in her throat. She'd been wanting to ask him for some time, but knew how stupid it would sound. At the moment, however, she thought Harris seemed to be in a good mood, and she was on a roll so far, what with getting him to say more than two sentences in a row. Before she could stop herself, she blurted it out. "Can I touch you?"

He raised his eyebrows. "What?"

She realized too late that it sounded distressingly like a clumsy come-on. She felt herself flushing. "Um... nevermind."

Harris looked at her a moment longer, then something changed in his face. He looked about to laugh. He rolled up the sleeve of his jacket and held an arm out to her.

Lydia edged timidly closer. The condition of his arm was much like that of his face. The surface was half skin, half exposed muscles and veins. She reached out and brushed her hand over his skin. It was dry, and more rigid than normal. It had a rough, dry texture. It seemed like it should hurt him. She remembered that she'd asked him if it hurt, being the way he was, and he hadn't answered. But then, he wouldn't let her touch him if it did, would he? She moved her hand to feel his muscle, but hesitated, looking up at him.

"It's okay," he told her. "So long as you're not jabbing it with sticks, you won't cause any damage."

Even so, she was as gentle as possible, if not for his sake, than for her own-just looking at it almost made _her _hurt. She ran her fingers over the shiny, red flesh. It was surreal. She'd seen people's insides during surgeries, but this was different. Veins sometimes rolled as her hand moved over them, but snapped back into place. He moved his fingers slightly, and the muscle shifted under her hand. Feeling invasive, she withdrew her hand and looked up at him. He was watching her curiously. Not knowing what else would be appropriate to say, Lydia just smiled faintly and retreated to a courteous distance. She squashed her pack into a comfortable shape and laid her head on it.

" 'Night," she said.

He unrolled his sleeve back into place. "Good night."


	6. Chapter 6

_Med-x is morphine. Bethesda had to change the name because Australia was going to ban the game if they put that in or something. But morphine sounds a lot less stupid than 'med-x', so that's what I'm going with here._

**_

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_**

**Chapter 6**

The next morning, Lydia saw super mutants for the first time.

"Get up." The voice was so clear and sober that she awoke immediately. She squinted in the early morning sunlight. Harris stood above her. "We have to go. Now." When she blinked at him, still halfway between a dream and reality, he reached down, grasped her arm, and hauled her up. She stumbled alongside him as he ran.

"Wait, my pack-" she said.

"We'll come back for it. Just keep your head down and try to be quiet." They ran over a small slope and stopped at the edge of a large ditch at the base of the other side of the hill. It was about seven feet deep and three feet wide, and started a short ways to the right and stretched far to the left. Harris jumped down, and she followed, first sitting on the edge and then pushing herself off so she slid down the side in a tiny rockslide.

He drew his rifle and leaned against the wall of the trench. Lydia did the same. "What is it?" she whispered.

"Super mutants."

If she hadn't been scared before, she was then. If Harris had ever looked fearful, it was when those words came out of his mouth. It was gone in an instant, but it was there, nonetheless.

"What's a super mutant?"

He ignored her. Perhaps now wasn't the best time to ask. She turned the dials on her Pip-Boy, watching the map for heat signatures. Three dots appeared north of them, slowly coming closer. She showed the screen to Harris, not wanting to speak. Who knew how good their hearing was?

He nodded, then looked her over as though he'd forgotten she was there and was seeing her for the first time. Reaching into his pack, he pulled out a small, boxy gun and handed it to her.

She took it hesitantly. "How do I use it?" she whispered. She'd never seen anything like it.

"Pull the trigger," he said simply. Lydia noted with distant interest that his voice sounded almost normal when he whispered. She couldn't hear the damage to his vocal cords anymore. "It's semiautomatic. I just put a new energy cell in, so you have thirty shots." He edged around her and moved left, away from the super mutants. Lydia followed, holding her gun tightly. They hadn't gotten far before she heard the something roar, sounding far too close.

"I SMELL THE HUMAN," someone thundered.

Lydia looked at her Pip-Boy. They were at the top of the hill, only twenty yards away. She tapped Harris's back urgently and showed him the screen. He pressed his lips together and exhaled slowly. He looked up and pointed down the trench. "Keep going. I'll catch up."

"Wait," Lydia hissed. He ignored her.

"YOU CAN'T HIDE. COME OUT."

He padded away back toward the middle of the ditch, closer to the mutants. Lydia crouched against the wall and held the gun close to her chest. The grip was slick with sweat, and she wiped her hands on her jeans to dry them. She didn't plan on leaving.

The super mutants stomped closer, the ground shaking with every step.

Harris raised his rifle, waiting for them to come into view above the ridge.

There was a gargantuan roar. "FOUND YOU!" The first mutant's head rose into view and Harris immediately fired at it. It was huge, even from a distance. It must have been almost twice as tall as she was, and three times as wide. Its blotchy acid-green and yellow limbs bulged with overgrown muscles, and its teeth were bared in a permanent snarl. She understood the name now. Super mutants, as in mutated humans. But the thing before her could never be mistaken for anything close to a normal human being.

It recoiled as bullets pounded into its skull. Amazingly, it took a full clip to put it down. It fell backward, landing with a groan. The instant it hit the ground, the other two mutants were upon them. One wielded a rifle, the other a long two by four. They were too big to fit into the trench, so they attacked from above. Harris sprinted further away as he reloaded, avoiding shots and wild swats from the two by four.

Lydia raised the gun with both shaking hands. She aimed as best she could at the head of the mutant holding the gun, and pulled the trigger, twice. Red beams of light discharged from the weapon and, rather than striking the mutant, flew harmlessly to the side of his head. The mutant waved a hand in front of its face as though to shoo the lasers away, then turned its beady eyes on her.

"HUMAN. YOU COME HERE." It started over to her, each footfall an earthquake. Lydia pointed the gun at it, aiming for its chest this time. She aimed a short distance in front of it, waited, and fired at the moment it lined up with her sight. It hit this time, and left a black scorch mark on its chest. It stumbled in surprise. While it hesitated, she shot it three more times. It howled in rage, and came at her faster. _Now would be a great time to do your stuff, VATS._

The pinprick in her left arm came like an answered prayer. She shivered as the adrenaline rushed through her system and the mutant's footsteps slowed. She raised the pistol again and she locked on to the mutant's head easily. Her mind raced as she mentally calculated the chance of hitting. _Sixty percent chance of hitting the head. Good enough._ She barely had to touch the trigger for the laser to shoot from the barrel. Over and over again her lasers hit the mutant's face, each time leaving a blackened spot and a small spray of ash that floated through the air like snow.

It had slowed in her barrage, but was almost upon her now, so close that she could see the capillaries in its bloodshot eyes. She could see herself reflected in its pupils.

The mutant reached out one enormous hand toward her. Just in time, it lurched sideways as bullets hit the other side of its head. Lydia leapt out of the way as it fell forward, narrowly avoiding getting crushed.

Harris was cornered at the far end of the trench, with walls on three sides. Instead of taking the time to reload, he had discarded his rifle and was using a pistol. The mutant still waved its two by four at him, and he couldn't stand still long enough to get a shot off. A few times he fired, but the shots went wild as he ducked to avoid the mutant's powerful swings.

VATS had worn off by then, so Lydia aimed for the larger target again. She shot the mutant's back twice and it turned, growling, to face her. Harris took the opportunity to empty several rounds into its head and neck. Amazingly, it seemed barely phased. It whipped back to him. "STOP THAT," it boomed, and it raised the board high above its head. Harris sank to the ground, out of the mutant's reach, and kept firing. The mutant ignored the bullets tearing its flesh and kneeled over the trench. Its blood dripped over Harris as he shot. It couldn't have had much time left, judging by the amount of blood pouring out of its neck.

Then the shots stopped coming. He was out of shots. As he reached for a new clip, the super mutant raised its board and brought it down clumsily, its aim hampered by its injuries. Nevertheless, it struck Harris's arm with acute force, and he cried out in pain. He tried to lift the gun, but winced and dropped it involuntarily. He groped for it with his good arm, but it was too far out of reach. The mutant raised its two by four yet again, and Lydia could have sworn it was smiling. Harris looked up at it helplessly.

"Hey!" Lydia screamed as loud as she could. The mutant looked at her, its arms still poised in the air, ready to strike. She took a breath, raised her gun, and pulled the trigger. The beam of light pierced its cranium. The mutant stood there for a second, staring blankly, before it fell over. The board tumbled from its hands.

Everything went very still, then, and it was silent but for the ringing in her ears. She lowered the pistol. She heard a short, pained sound.

Harris was slumped in the dirt, grimacing. He was covered in blood, but she thought most of it was the super mutant's. There was a particularly large red spot on his upper right arm, and something inside his jacket was poking out to form a point in the cloth, pointing toward his chest. _His humerus is broken. The mutant hit it so hard the bone went out through the other side of his arm. _He drew a stimpak out of a pocket and went to inject it into the injured arm.

"Wait!" she said. "You can't just stim a compound fracture like that. You have to set it first."

"I've done it before," he argued in a strained voice.

"Then I doubt the breaks were this bad, or you'd still have bones sticking out of you all over. Trust me, you don't want to do that." She put down her gun as she squatted beside him. When she moved to take the stimpak from him, his fist tightened around it instinctively. She looked at him hesitantly. _Is he just paranoid, or has he actually met someone before who would steal a stimpak from an injured person and leave them to fend for themselves? _

Realizing what he was doing, Harris relinquished the stimpak.

"I'm not going to run away on you now," Lydia reassured him quietly. "I've taken the Hippocratic Oath. Anyway, I'm not stupid. I still need you." He didn't reply, so she continued, "Do you have any morphine?"

He shook his head, and winced.

"A knife?"

He reached toward a pocket in his pants, but couldn't get to it without moving his upper body. Lydia retrieved it for him and lifted the blade to his arm. It was long and heavy, very unlike the scalpels and scissors she ordinarily used in the operating room. But it was in good condition, and the sharp blade sliced through the material of his jacket without much trouble. She pulled away the flaps of cloth to reveal a pool of blood and an ivory and scarlet splotched protrusion of bone. It would have been hard to tell what was injured and what wasn't, but for that bone.

She held the stimpak flat against her palm so it was ready to use when she needed it. She placed a hand on either side of the fracture. "I'm sorry, this is going to hurt. A lot."

Pulling her hands in opposite directions, she bent the bone back inward. Harris wailed. She kept pulling until the broken bone was approximately aligned under the flesh, then jabbed the stimpak into it. Tissue reknit itself together over the bone. Harris's face smoothed and his body relaxed, though his chest still heaved.

"Sorry," Lydia said again, sitting back on her knees. "We'd usually put a patient under before doing that."

Harris sat up and used another stim. He experimentally flexed the arm to and fro. Satisfied, he cut off the remnants of his sleeve and used it to wipe the blood off of himself.

"Are you okay?" she asked. She was surprised he hadn't passed out.

"Yes." He stood and paused, giving her a sidelong glance. He took a cigarette from his front pocket in an automatic, thoughtless motion. Then, seeing it, he put it back. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." He was clearly uncomfortable. Lydia decided not to linger on what had just transpired. She picked up the laser pistol and looked at it appraisingly. "I like this gun," she told him. "It's almost as light as my BB gun, and there's no kickback. Where did you get it, anyway? I've never seen anything like it."

"They're fairly common out here. It was under a counter in the grocery store we went to."

Lydia looked at up at him hopefully. "Can I keep it?"

He paused and examined her, as though considering. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't do to have you running around the Wasteland with nothing but a BB gun, would it?"

"Nope," Lydia agreed cheerfully.

She stood up and bumped her head on something. Looking up, she came face to face with the super mutant she'd shot. It was still leaning over the ditch, its upper body dangling over the side. As she hit it, a pile of ash fell off of the back of its head. She took a step back. "You don't think there are any more, do you?" She checked her map for heat signatures.

"No. They don't travel in large groups outside of downtown. They're incapable of stealth, anyway. If there were any more, we'd know."

"Good."

Harris went to the side of the trench and pulled himself up, then reached down with his newly healed arm and offered her a hand. She held it gratefully, braced her other arm against the wall, and jumped. With some effort on both their parts, she was heaved up and over the lip of the ditch. She started up the slope, going back to their campsite to get her bag. When she looked up at Harris, he'd regained his usual stoic, uninterested expression.

"I suppose this kind of thing happens to you all the time," Lydia said.

" 'This kind of thing'?"

"Yeah. Massive shootouts, coming within an inch of death, surgery-worthy injuries. Etcetera."

"Not all the time."

Lydia laughed halfheartedly. "More than I'm used to." At the top of the hill she looked back at the ditch where the three enormous corpses lay. Her hackles raised. For a short, irrational moment she envisioned them getting up and coming after them again, reaching out with grimy hands big enough to wrap around her entire waist. She turned away quickly. "Do you run into them often?"

"I see them sometimes, but I haven't had to kill any for a long time. Super mutants usually only go after humans."

Lydia frowned as she dissected that sentence. "You don't consider yourself human?"

Harris didn't respond.

"Don't you think you guys take this whole 'ghoul' thing a little too seriously? One of my patients back in the vault has psoriasis, but you don't see me classifying him as a different species."

"This is a little more than psoriasis."

"That's beside the point." She picked up her backpack as they reached the campsite. She placed the laser pistol inside, having no better place to put it. They continued on their way southwest, Lydia falling into step behind the ghoul. "You weren't born a ghoul."

"No one is."

"Do ghouls have ghoul children?"

"We can't have children."

"Oh. Then it's impossible to become your own species or subspecies; it's just a mutation. You're a Homo sapien, Harris."

"Whatever you say."

She just smiled at him. Happy about her small victory, she wandered mentally backward through the conversation.

As they walked, her smile faded. A heavy feeling settled in her stomach; the same feeling she got when she lied to her father when she was a kid. The super mutants were after her, not him. It was her fault the confrontation had happened in the first place.

Something odd occurred to her. 'Keep going, I'll catch up,' Harris had said. He'd just almost died trying to protect monster bait. Why? What was his motive for taking her with him? He didn't seem to like her very much, and he probably wouldn't have wanted or needed the company even if he did. She was proving to be slightly more than completely useless in a fight, but he would fare better on his own. She _had_ been able to fix his arm, which was probably the most help she'd been to him so far, but he wouldn't have needed the help had she not been there to attract the super mutants in the first place. Did she have something else he wanted? Maybe he wanted information or technology from the vaults, and thought she could help him get it? Things like Pip-Boys could be worth a lot of caps, couldn't they?

She glanced up at him. Maybe it was just her, but he looked a little more suspicious than he had before.

Unease tainted her thoughts as they walked. She suddenly couldn't get it out of her head. He'd helped her before, but not like this. He'd never been in such serious danger. Yet here he was, still apparently happy to have her along, even after all that.

On one hand, he'd saved her life multiple times, going far out of his way to protect her. But maybe she was being too unwary. So far there were few things that she knew about him, but among them were the facts that he regularly murdered people (bad people, as far as she'd seen, but people, still), and he dealt chems. He did both with no visible remorse.

Maybe there was something else he wanted from her. Something a young smoothskin female could aptly provide him? Maybe...maybe he'd saved her from that man in Megaton because he wanted her for himself. Were ghouls even interested in non-ghouls? Surely they were, if they used to be smoothskins themselves.

It was the first time she had really paid attention to two things about him: one, he was male, and two, he was a lot bigger than her. He was really only of average size, but that still left him a head taller than her. Even without the size difference, she was pretty sure most Wastelanders could have overpowered her if they wanted. Even the more well-built among the Vault 101 citizens (let alone her, resident waif and suspected anorexia victim) hadn't had the life of hardship (and way-too-far-apart cities) that made the Wastelanders all look bulky and athletic to her.

She jumped when he turned his head to return her gaze with cloudy, pale blue eyes. The way he looked at things in his disinterested way, she got the feeling he wasn't the type to get uncomfortable about eye contact. He was probably good at staring contests, when he bothered to make eye contact with anyone.

"It's rude to stare." He was making fun of her again.

"I'm not staring... " Lydia protested, but just then he pulled his rifle down from his shoulder and ran ahead of her. He was going after something that looked like a wild dog in the distance. She didn't bother to take out her pistol. He always got rid of small animals like that in one or two shots.

There was something wrong about this. He wasn't the type who gave things out for free. He wanted something. She told herself that it was ridiculous to think that he would hurt her. Rude, even. Ungrateful, after all he'd done for her. She kept telling herself that, but it didn't keep her from shrinking away whenever he came near.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

The next few days passed uneventfully. They walked, and walked, and walked. They stopped at several dilapidated houses and picked through their remains. There was little of interest, but they found enough food to keep Lydia fed and free of rads (any _more_ rads, anyway). Occasionally they would come across a pile of nuclear waste-filled barrels and Lydia's geiger counter would start ticking, but they circumvented these areas without any complaint from Harris, who could have walked straight through them.

When they stopped for the night, Lydia was painfully aware of how close to Harris she slept, and found herself widening the gap between them every night. If he noticed, he said nothing about it.

They sometimes ran into animals: dogs and enormous rats and scorpions. Harris usually found and dealt with these things before Lydia even knew they were there, so it was no surprise when he pulled his rifle from his shoulder and told her to be quiet and stay behind him. She did as he said, and of course, she soon saw someone ahead of them. The person was crouched down, facing away from them, and didn't notice them until they were very close.

She (for it was a woman, Lydia saw) whirled around when she heard them approaching. Lydia was alarmed to see that her mouth was stained blood red. The woman leaned to the side slightly, halfheartedly trying to hide the thing on the ground behind her. Lydia looked to see what it was, and it took her a moment to make sense of the mess behind the woman.

"Oh, god... "

A body. A human body that she'd been eating raw. There were fresh gunshot wounds in its chest. Parts of its thigh, hip, and arms had been torn off in crude strips where she'd dug her fingers into the flesh. There was blood and unidentifiable red and pink bits scattered around the corpse. Lydia's stomach heaved and she nearly threw up. She quickly looked away, instead staring into the eyes of the woman who knelt in front of them. She looked quite unhealthy. Was she a raider? Harris said raiders were sometimes cannibalistic. She wasn't _dressed_ like a raider.

The woman's eyes darted back and forth between her and Harris. She didn't move. "Don't judge me," she finally said. She wiped her face with the back of her gory hand, leaving an even bigger red smudge than was there before.

Lydia, standing behind Harris, couldn't see his reaction, if he had any. He shifted his grip on his rifle. It was pointed vaguely in the woman's direction, though Lydia couldn't tell if he intended to use it or not.

Seeing the movement, the woman stiffened even more and said in a rush, "I didn't kill him. He was like this when I got here. You have no right to judge me."

There was another tense moment of silence, then Harris stepped slowly around the woman and continued past her. The woman watched him warily. Lydia scampered after him, giving the woman a wider berth than he had. Lydia continued staring back at her with morbid fascination. When they'd passed her, she resumed eating, digging her fingers into the dead man's wounds. The body wiggled limply under her touch. Lydia gagged.

When they were out of earshot of the woman, Lydia spoke in a harsh, hoarse voice. "You're just going to let her do that?" she asked Harris.

"Hm?"

She grabbed his sleeveless forearm roughly, and he stopped. "What's the matter with you?" she demanded. "Did you not see what I just saw? How can you let that go on?"

He just stared at her.

She shook her head in disbelief. "I forgot; 'it's not your job to police the Wasteland,' right?"

Harris studied her a moment longer. "Okay. Kill her, then."

She frowned. "What?"

He thrust his assault rifle into her chest and let go of it. Without thinking, Lydia threw her arms around it to prevent it from falling. Out of Harris's hands it seemed disproportionately large and dangerous: all heavy, deadly, wood and metal. "Kill her, if you feel so strongly about it."

She gave him a black look, tightly and awkwardly clutching the gun. "What makes you so sure I won't?"

He didn't say anything. It didn't matter. He knew as well as she did that she wouldn't be able to do it. He'd seen her kill that raider. He knew she hadn't liked it.

Jutting her jaw in defiance, she let go of the rifle and it clattered to the ground. Harris picked it up wordlessly and kept walking.

Lydia fumed in silence for a while before her vexation had abated enough to let her speak.

"You believe her," she said finally. "That she didn't kill him."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"She was unarmed. The body had bullet wounds in it."

"That's all?"

He shrugged. "And maybe I just believed her."

Lydia snorted.

"What does it matter? Why do you think it's our place to decide whether she was lying, and whether she deserves to live? Am I her judge, jury, and executioner just because I happened by?"

Lydia didn't say anything.

"You had the chance to do something about it and you didn't, so obviously you are of the same opinion. Or you're just a coward."

"I am _not_ a coward." Was she? Some doubt must have shown in her face, because Harris gave her a small, humorless smile.

"No. Maybe not," he conceded. It was a few quiet minutes later when he told her, "I don't think that being reluctant to become a murderer is something to be ashamed of."

She raised her eyebrows. It was an odd sentiment, coming from someone who killed so often. She'd rather assumed that he enjoyed fighting, or at least didn't mind it. Maybe she was wrong.

Harris took out a bit of that jerky of his and started eating, and Lydia watched the bare muscles in the side of his face working. _Contract, relax, contract, relax. _It still amazed her. She would have killed to see a ghoul when she was learning physiology in the vault. They were walking, talking anatomy diagrams. It was beautiful, in a way, like the skeletal trees and building frames. She thought of everything she'd seen since she left the vault: raiders, ghouls, Megaton, explosions, super mutants... and the bodies, all the blood and bodies... the Wasteland in all its vastness. It was lovely and ghastly. Horrid, but spellbinding.

Then Harris looked at her, and she realized she was staring. Again. She cleared her throat weakly. "Harris..." she started. He kept his eyes on her, waiting for her to go on. It was something he'd been doing more and more recently-watching her closely like that, like a predator studying its prey. It was unnerving, and it was one of the reasons she was determined to ask. She looked him in the eye and asked, "Why are you taking me with you?"

" 'Taking' you?" He blinked slowly. "It was my impression that you came voluntarily."

"You know what I mean."

"You remember what happened in Megaton," he said.

She blushed. "Yeah."

"You asked me not to leave you."

"I know. But why didn't you?"

"Why would I?"

"I slow you down, I attract super mutants, I use up your food and stimpaks, and I talk too much, that's why."

He narrowed his eyes as he looked sideways at her. "You can leave, if you really want to."

She quickly shook her head. "I don't want to leave, I just... " _Shut up, Lydia. No matter how shady he might be, he's the only thing keeping you alive out here. Don't give him more reasons to abandon you. _She sighed and rubbed her eyes in exasperation. "Nevermind. Forget I said anything."

"You want to know what's in it for me. You want to know what I want from you."

She stared ahead, listening without looking at him.

"Nothing. There's nothing in it for me, and I don't want anything from you."

Lydia kept walking as though she hadn't heard him. _Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't._

A few hours later, Harris stopped under a fallen power line tower.

"What is it?" Lydia asked in a hushed voice, looking around anxiously.

"Nothing," he said, leaning against the tower. "Smoke break. You can get something to eat if you want." He struck a match to light a cigarette, then shook it to put it out and tossed to the ground.

_Oh_. In the past he'd stopped to smoke or eat while he waited for her to catch up to him, since he usually paced far ahead of her after a while. The distance between them when they walked had grown smaller and smaller in the past few days, and today she had kept up with him for nearly the entire trip. She could take a break, too, now. She noted that her legs were hardly sore. Dad would be proud. Lack of exercise had always been her only health problem. Of course, now she had other problems. She touched her forehead. The cut was healed, but there was still a ring of dry skin where her bandage had been. She'd noticed flaky skin elsewhere, too, on her ankles and around her neck. It must have been the dry air.

She sat down with her knees drawn up, resting her head on them. She wasn't hungry, so she closed her eyes, idly tracing shapes in the dirt... slowly drumming her fingers... flipping through the screens on her Pip-Boy...

She turned to the map screen, looking at the distance they'd traveled so far. There was a very long, winding line of landscape mapped between Vault 101 and where they were now, far south of there and almost to downtown. She zoomed back in on their current location, and stopped. Three dots had appeared on the map. One was Harris, but what about the other two?

"Something's here," she said. Just as she looked up, there was a twanging sound and something blue and glowing shot through the air and hit Harris in the temple. The blow knocked him sideways and he staggered, just managing to stay on his feet. He raised a hand to his head in a slow, confused way. Lydia looked to the left, behind her, in the direction the shot came from. Two people came out from behind a rock formation nearby. One held something like a small computer screen with a handle. He aimed it at her, and she dove to the side just in time to avoid another shot of blue light. She scrambled behind the tower. Why wasn't Harris doing anything? She could hear the hurried footsteps of the people behind her. The metal beams of the tower didn't give her much cover, and there was nothing else around that she could hide behind. Harris just stood there, wobbling like he could hardly stand.

Her laser pistol was in her pack, which was sitting on the ground back there, painfully out of reach. Harris's rifle was still strapped on his back and by the time she got it off they would have shot her. _He had a pistol_, she suddenly remembered. She'd seen him use it once or twice when his assault rifle ran out of ammo. He probably kept it in a holster, but his jacket covered his hips and she couldn't see if it was there. It was still her best chance. She had to try.

She darted forward and reached him at the same time as the other person, a woman. _He's right handed... _She reached under his jacket on his right side. Sure enough, she felt the cold metal of the gun and leather of a holster. In a flash she drew it out and raised it. The woman was putting some kind of metal collar around Harris's neck. Lydia aimed the gun at her face, but before she could fire, the woman threw up an arm and knocked her hand to the side. Lydia's fingers slipped and she fired a shot into the air to the side of the woman. The woman wrapped a long-fingered hand around her wrist and wrenched her forward, pulling her to the ground. Lydia was flipped to her back and landed with a force that knocked the wind out of her. The gun fell from her hands and skittered away. As she struggled to draw in air, the woman knelt on top of her, further impeding her attempts to breathe. The woman had Harris's pistol now, and Lydia could feel the barrel against her chest.

The woman pressed another collar into Lydia's hand. "Put it on, sweetheart." She grinned, displaying a wide mouth and narrow eyes. Lydia wriggled in an instinctual attempt to get out from under the woman so she could breathe. The woman rapped the end of the gun on Lydia's sternum. "Around your neck. Now."

Lydia struggled to put it on. The woman wouldn't move out of the way to let her lift her head, so she had to wrestle it under her neck. Finally she got it around and snapped it into place. The woman smiled at her with satisfaction for a moment longer, then climbed off of her. Lydia curled onto her side and gasped until air reached her lungs in shallow spurts.

"Give me your coat," a man was saying somewhere nearby.

Lydia looked up, touching the heavy steel thing around her neck. _What's that supposed to be for?_ The woman was standing on her heels with her arms crossed, paying no attention to her. The man with the strange gun was standing in front of Harris. He'd taken his rifle and rucksack.

"What? No... " Harris squinted, trying to focus his eyes.

"It's hot out, and you're safe for now. You don't need it. You want to take it off and give it to me."

Harris reluctantly unzipped the jacket and handed it to the man. He gave it to the woman, who began rummaging through its pockets. She pulled out several stimpaks, various types of projectiles, and a pack of cigarettes.

"Have you got anything else?" The man asked Harris.

"Uh... yes." He stood there, swaying, staring into the middle distance.

The man rolled his eyes. "Give it to me."

"... No."

The woman grinned at her companion. "This one's really fighting it, isn't he?"

"We're good friends," the man informed Harris. "I just need to borrow some things. You want to help me out, right?"

"Uh... I suppose... " He slowly pulled the knife out of his pocket and gave it to the man.

"Is that it?"

"... Yeah."

"Sit down."

Harris sat heavily, without argument.

"What did you do to him?" Lydia asked.

"Don't worry," the man said as he went to her backpack. "I hit him with a mesmetron. It'll wear off in about twenty minutes." He turned to Lydia. She was surprised to see that he wasn't much older than herself. "What about you? What have you got?"

"My backpack," she said. She hated just giving up like this, but even she knew when she was beaten. "I'm not carrying anything else."

The man nodded. Apparently he believed her.

"What about that?" the woman asked, looking at Lydia's wrist.

"It's my Pip-Boy."

The woman stared at her blankly.

"It's a...portable computer."

"Take it off, then. Don't make me repeat myself."

"It doesn't come off."

The woman gave her a malicious smile and raised Harris's pistol. "You must not have heard me. I said take it off."

"I can't," Lydia insisted, looking daggers at her.

Her pistol went off with a bang. Lydia shrieked and threw up her arms in defense, but she had aimed harmlessly to the side of her head.

Miraculously, the man interjected. "Pip-Boys don't come off, Shin. The wearer has to be dead to remove it. She'll be worth more to us alive, don't you think?"

Shin lowered the gun. "You ruin everything."

He smiled back. "I know. But one of us has to look after our investments."

"I'm not worth anything," Lydia said quickly, working out what was going on. "My family is dead. No one will pay you a ransom for me."

They both looked at her curiously, then exchanged a look. "What are you, stupid?" Shin said.

"She's from a vault," the man told her. "That's where she got the Pip-Boy. I don't think she knows about... " He smiled.

Shin grinned her biggest grin yet. Kneeling down, she took Lydia's hand and held it gently. She spoke in a sarcastically sweet voice, as though she were talking to a child. "Sweetie. Now don't take this the wrong way." She cleared her throat and her black eyes met Lydia's brown ones. "We're selling you. You're a slave." She gave her a pouty, sympathetic look. Lydia just stared at the woman in disbelief.

"Now, here are the rules. See this thing around your neck? It's a bomb, and it's connected to Paradise Falls via radio signal. If you start moving away from there instead of toward it, your head explodes. If you try to disarm the bomb, your head explodes. If we die before you get there, your head explodes. Not because of the collar, I mean. In that case, they'll just shoot you when you get there and we're not with you." She smiled sweetly, cocking her head. "Any questions? Good." She stood, patting Lydia on the head. "We'll be on our way as soon as your boyfriend gets his land legs back."

The pair proceeded to dump the contents of both packs onto the ground and sort through it. They made two piles: things they wanted to keep or sell (food, water, ammunition, stimpaks, rad-x, Harris's assault rifle) and things they deemed worthless (the laser pistol, the camera, her vault suit). "Andy," Shin said. She held the suit to her body and struck a pose. "What do you think?" She was far too tall for it, and it looked silly and childish on her.

Lydia didn't move through all of this. She watched, fists clenched at her sides, as they rifled through the remains of her life, but she didn't really see it. She felt numb. Finally another movement caught her eye and she looked up. Harris set his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He wasn't wobbling so much anymore. She went over and sat down on her knees next to him. "Harris?"

He looked up at her. "Lydia."

She glanced back at Shin and Andy, wondering if they would want to stop them from talking, but they weren't even looking at her. "Are you okay?"

"My head... my head hurts," he said in a quiet voice.

"They said it was a mesmetron. They said it would wear off soon."

"A mes... what?" He shook his head in frustration. The mesmetron, whatever it was, was still affecting him. He stared into space in front of him.

He looked so strange without his jacket and his rifle, and in this state of mind. He looked...mortal. "Harris, they said they're going to sell us. They said the collars will explode if we don't go with them. Are they telling the truth? Have you seen these before?"

Harris looked at her in bewilderment, then felt the collar on his own neck as though he'd just realized it was there. A shadow passed over his face, and he nodded. Lydia's heart sank. A part of her had been hoping that the woman was making it up, that they still had a chance.

"I didn't even see them coming," Harris said distantly, as though that were inconceivable.

Over the next ten minutes Lydia watched with some relief as he returned to lucidity. With each minute his face grew harder. She could see the muscles in his temple moving as he ground his teeth.

When their abductors had finished allocating their belongings, Shin sauntered over to them. "Up," she ordered. They stood, Harris leaning on Lydia when his balance wavered. He gave the woman a look of pure hatred, and she smiled back. "North," she said, pointing behind them. "You two are in front. Let's move."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

After their enslavement, time passed in much the same way, the main difference being the constant, disturbing weight of the collar on Lydia's shoulders. Andy and Shin walked slowly, and they didn't get as far every day as they had when it was only her and Harris. The hours went by like molasses. Few people passed them, and those who did ignored them, carefully avoiding meeting her eyes. They knew what was happening, but they did nothing about it. It angered Lydia at first, but then, they couldn't really help her any more than she could help herself.

There was mostly quiet as they walked. Andy and Shin spoke sometimes, quietly enough that Lydia couldn't really hear what they were saying. When there had been silence for a while, Shin would wander over to Lydia and harass her, alternately pinching her or petting her hair. (When this had been repeated a number of times, Lydia was ashamed to find herself and hunching defensively whenever she came near.) She tried something similar with Harris, but it didn't have the same effect on him. Realizing this, her assaults degenerated into name-calling and insults to his intelligence and appearance. Andy didn't participate in her antics, but he didn't prevent them, either. He seemed amused by her, if unimpressed.

Not long after sunset, she heard footsteps getting closer behind her-a gait that she'd come to recognize as Shin's. She braced herself. When the woman was almost on top of her, she reached an arm around Lydia's neck. "Time for bed, sweetie," she said softly in her ear, her hot breath sticking to her hair. _Don't punch her. She's got a gun. Don't punch her. _

Lydia couldn't sleep, even late into the night. She and Harris were on one side of the camp, away from the other two, who had fallen asleep some time ago. Even when Shin was sleeping, that damn smile stayed plastered serenely on her face. _I bet she came out of the womb looking like that. _Andy looked much the same as he did when he was awake. He had an average kind of face fringed with thick, dark hair. In sleep he looked less severe, younger. She'd almost call him good-looking. He lay on top of his pack, into which they'd transfered everything they'd taken from Lydia and Harris. The rest had been left in a heap by the power line tower. As far as she could see, they had four weapons now: the assault rifle, the mesmetron, and two pistols. Shin had discarded her own gun in favor of Harris's pistol, which was in a holster around her waist, between her body and the ground. The rifle and mesmetron were in the pack. The last pistol was in Andy's shoulder holster, also between his body and the ground.

Harris was lying on his back on her right, an arm's length away. His eyes were closed, and his chest rose and sank evenly.

"Are you awake?" Lydia whispered to him. He nodded without opening his eyes.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Another nod.

She swallowed, glancing at the prone figures beyond her feet. They looked asleep, but she lowered her voice even more just in case. "I was thinking. That woman said that if they weren't with us when we got to... " What was the name of the place, again? "...Paradise Falls, that the people there would kill us. But why would they do that? They'd be happy to have two slaves they didn't have to pay anyone for, right? I think she was making it up. If we could get one of their guns... "

"Even if we killed them, we'd still have to go to Paradise Falls. It's a lot of risk for not much gain."

"Yeah, I thought so, too," Lydia admitted. "But at least we wouldn't have to listen to that woman anymore," she joked, smiling weakly at him.

He turned his head to look at her. The resignation in his face startled her. Her smile faded.

"We can get out of this. We'll think of something," she whispered. He just shook his head.

She looked away, picking the frayed hem of her shirt. "I tried to fight them, after they shot you."

"I know."

"You remember?"

"A little."

If only she'd pulled the trigger an instant faster, she could have blown that woman's face off, and they wouldn't be here now. A mistake made in a millisecond had sealed their fates-both hers _and _Harris's. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It's not your fault."

"It's not yours, either."

He just shook his head.

The next day, they again stopped at sunset. Shin ordered them to stay put while she and Andy retreated a safe distance, where, presumably, they were close enough to chase them if they ran but far enough away that they would have time to react if she and Harris attacked them. Lydia stared when they took out two packages of dry noodles and started eating them. Her stomach growled. After a while Shin caught her eye. Lydia looked away quickly, but it was too late. She drifted over, noodle pack in tow.

At first Lydia didn't look at her. She stared at the ground and picked her nails as she made her way over. She was suddenly reminded of Butch.

During breaks in class, Lydia would sit at her desk, working or talking (being talked to, rather) with Amata. Inevitably, the Tunnel Snakes would come over and start taunting them.

"Ignore them," Amata advised. "They'll get bored and find something else to waste their massive intellect on." Contrary to popular belief, ignoring bullies doesn't really work. When they pretended the boys weren't there, they got more aggressive, poking them and pulling their hair. When they were out of sight of adults, Lydia often found herself being tripped or shoved against walls.

One day, before class started, Mr. Brotch was digging for something in his desk, not watching the class. As Lydia was sitting down at her desk, something hit her in the back of the head so hard that her head flew forward and hit the desk. When she'd gotten over her shock, she turned to see Butch sitting at the back of the class with his hands folded neatly on top of his desk, beaming at her. Her head pounded with pain and rage. She rose from her desk, never taking her eyes off that shit-eating grin. She strode over to him, drew back her fist, and punched him between the eyes as hard as she could. His head jerked back and blood poured from his nose. She got another blow in before he kicked out at her, knocking her to the floor. Of course the other Tunnel Snakes had immediately leapt to Butch's aid. She was sore for the next few days, but it was worth it for the downturn in pestering after that.

Maybe it was time to stop ignoring Shin.

"Do you want some?" Shin said, looking down at her. She waved the noodles to and fro in front of her face.

Lydia met her gaze, saying nothing.

"Well, what will you give me for them?" She sat down next to Lydia, close enough that their thighs touched. She brushed Lydia's hair behind her ear. "I think we should trade." Lydia drew back from her involuntarily, and Shin wrapped a hand around her neck, pulling her closer. Lydia fairly shook with fury. Shin brought her face closer and grazed her with her lips. She stuck out her tongue and dragged it across her cheek.

Before she could stop herself, Lydia flung up her elbow and pounded the woman's head with it. Shin's face twisted into a snarl and she slapped her, moving so fast that her hand was invisible. Before Lydia could recover, Shin tore the pistol from her holster and slammed the grip into the side of her head. For a moment everything was black as her senses were invaded by pain and shock and the external world disappeared. Her head spun. Something moved past her. There was a scuffling sound. Something scraping the dirt. Her ears rang.

The world faded into view, swirling and filled with spots. Harris was on top of Shin, struggling to keep the gun pointed away from him. He shifted his weight to her stomach and held her arms above her head. The gun was still in her hand, but pointed uselessly to the side. Her arms shook as she fought to raise them, but they wouldn't move. Harris just held her like that for a moment, as though unsure what to do next. Andy watched them with mild interest.

Shin screamed, her face contorted into an expression of primal rage. She kicked out wildly, but hit only air. Suddenly her head shot forward and she sank her teeth into Harris's forearm. He flinched, loosening his grip on her arm. She immediately jerked it free and punched him in the throat just above his collar. As he choked, she ripped her other arm out from under him. He moved to stop her, but coughing at the same time made him clumsy, and she was pushing against him with both arms together now. The gun in her hand seemed to move in slow motion as Lydia watched, curving forward and coming to a stop in front of Harris's face. Her face broke into a manic smile. She was going to kill him.

"Shin!" It was Andy.

She stopped. Harris followed suit, as her twitching hand held the pistol an inch from his head now.

"Kill him if you want, but I still want my share of caps either way, " he said placidly. "We'll get 300 for him, easily. That's 150 you'll owe me.

"I think I can deal with that," Shin said to Harris. She slowly raised the gun up higher and pressed it against his forehead.

"And good luck getting the collar off after he's dead," Andy added. "You've already lost two, haven't you? Grouse will not be happy."

Shin hesitated, glaring at Harris. For a long time they just stared each other down.

"Goddamnit," she finally muttered through clenched teeth. "Get the fuck off of me, zombie."

He backed off of her. She stood and looked him in the eye. They were the same height.

Without warning she struck him in the face with the pistol. Lydia gasped. The sound drew the woman's attention. Gaining back her smile, she stalked over to Lydia and went to hit her again. Lydia ducked when she saw the punch coming, but there was no impact. Opening her eyes timidly, she saw Shin's fist hovering in front of her eye. The woman laughed and walked away, picking up her dropped noodles. She sat down and began chatting with Andy as though nothing had happened.

Harris sat down next to Lydia. Again, he was injured because of her. Equal parts guilt and resentment toward him rose up in her, the latter present only because of the former. "You shouldn't have done that," she said reproachfully.

"Yes, I should."

She looked him over miserably, assessing the cheekbone and the bottom edge of his eye socket were already inflamed and turning odd colors. There was blood dripping out of his nasal cavity and over his lips. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. How were you supposed to stem a nosebleed if you had no nose? Maybe he'd had it happen before though, because it didn't seem to worry him. He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed through his mouth.

Lydia felt her left temple. It was hot to the touch and there was a crescent-shaped cut next to her eye. It was a little sticky, but it wasn't bleeding too much. Hopefully it wouldn't get infected. Even if one of the slavers had brought any of her medical supplies, she didn't dare ask for it. She would just have to try to keep it out of the dirt. She pulled her dirty hair into a ponytail on the back of her head to keep it away from the cut.

Harris stared at the ground, leaning forward so that the blood splattered into the dirt rather than on him. It seemed that the longer she was around him, the worse off he was. She wondered if, like the super mutants, she had attracted the slavers in the first place. They said they could get 300 caps for Harris. How much was she worth? Or maybe Harris would usually have seen them before they got a chance to shoot him, but he'd let his guard down since he learned of her Pip-Boy's ability to detect other organisms.

Again Lydia couldn't fall sleep, even long after Andy and Shin had. Whenever she was on the precipice of sleep, she would see Shin's gun coming at her face, or Harris's, and she started, waking herself.

At some point in the night she must have fallen asleep, for she awoke in the morning to Harris nudging her shoulder. It was early-the sun had just risen. Andy was up and eating a hardtack biscuit. He gave one to each of them, which they devoured. Neither of them had eaten since the previous morning.

Shin was nowhere to be found. Lydia assumed she'd gone to use the bathroom, until they left and she still hadn't returned. Maybe she had been right to fight her after all; maybe they scared her off. She asked Harris if he'd seen what happened to her.

"They were talking before you woke up," he said. "They decided that only one of them needed to accompany us to Paradise Falls, to receive payment for us. She said she still had one collar left."

So she was out hunting for another slave. Heaven help whoever ran into her. At least she wasn't with them anymore. She wondered if Harris had been awake already, or if their voices had roused him. Maybe it was her imagination, but his eyelids seemed to droop more than usual.

"Did you get any sleep last night?"

"Some."

"Are you okay?"

He frowned down at her. "You keep asking me that. I'm fine."

"You just look... tired."

"Like shit, you mean?"

Lydia blinked, taken aback. "I didn't say that. I just thought, you seem anxious."

"I wonder why that would be?"

"It's going to be okay," she told him.

"No it's not!" he hissed back. He gripped his collar demonstratively and said, "_This_ is not okay. _None_ of this is okay. People don't just walk out of Paradise Falls. There's not going to be any miraculous escape. When are you going to get it through your stupid little head?"

Lydia was stunned mute. Harris looked at her a moment longer, then turned to Andy, who was watching the exchange. "Can I have a cigarette?"

He shook his brunette head once, smiling softly. "My associate smokes. She took your pack."

Harris growled and kept walking.

Lydia was at a loss. She could deal with a broken arm. She had no idea how to fix broken spirits. Now that she had lost her medical supplies and her gun, she was worse than useless.

On the bright side, Shin was gone, and Andy didn't bother them the way she had. He was an odd person, Lydia thought. When she asked for food or water, he gave it to her without argument. He smiled politely when their eyes met. He asked them to do things, rather than ordering them. Yet he didn't mind the company of a sadist like Shin, and he sold human beings for a living.

Lydia was contemplating this as she stared at the horizon through glazed eyes. Her legs moved in the same mechanical motion they had for the past two weeks. It seemed to be all she ever did. It didn't bother her anymore; she took it for granted, almost: wake up, walk for hours upon hours, go to sleep, wake up, repeat... Did it really make a difference whether she was a slave or not? It was all the same.

That night, instead of going straight to sleep (or trying to) Lydia went over to Andy. She was confident that it was safe to be near him. He was weird, but not malicious. She hoped.

He looked up and smiled faintly as she approached. When she was about ten feet away he said, "Stay there, please."

She stopped.

"What do you need?"

"I just wanted to talk."

He raised an eyebrow. "Okay...I should tell you right now, though, I can't let you go. Even if I wanted to, I can't get the collars off once they're on."

"I know." She paused. Andy waited patiently for her to continue. "You're awfully polite for a slaver," she said bluntly.

He laughed. "I suppose. Should I not be?"

"I was just wondering why you bothered. Your friend seemed to enjoy being... _not_ polite. Isn't that half the point of slavery? Being able to treat people like they're not people?"

"It is for some. I don't share Shin's tastes, personally."

"But you don't care that the people at Paradise Falls, and whoever buys us, probably will?"

He paused then, as though thinking. "I care a little."

Lydia was surprised at that. The way he said it-totally matter-of-factly, without any real emotion-was strangely in conflict with the statement, but there was something very honest about the way he spoke. "Then why do you do this?"

"It's easy and it pays well."

Lydia tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her disgust.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry about this, really. It's just that my own well-being is more important to me than yours. We all have to look out for ourselves. I'd feel the same way if our positions were reversed."

"Right." She actually believed him. Not that it mattered that he was sorry. That did her absolutely no good whatsoever.

He smiled bemusedly. "In the time I've been doing this, I've had a lot of begging and crying, a few attempts to kill me... no one ever 'just wanted to talk'."

Lydia shrugged and turned to go back to her spot next to Harris. She'd talked enough.

"Hey, what's your name?" he asked.

"Lydia."

"It was good talking to you, Lydia."

"Yeah," she said sullenly. "You, too."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

A few quiet days and nights later, Lydia, Harris, and Andy slept in a circle of broken down cars on an ancient highway. Strange voices crept into Lydia's dreams. She tried to ignore them. _Go away. I want to sleep._ The voices stopped, but there was scuffling, then something clanking distantly. She woke up a little more, remembering that she was in the Wasteland, not the vault. This was not a safe place. Something was happening. Forcing her eyes open, she saw Harris and Andy kneeling next to a car, peering through the windows. She lifted herself up on one arm. This was odd. Andy usually kept his distance from them. And what were they doing up in the middle of the night, anyway?

"What's going on?"

They both shushed her. She crawled over to them and peered through the car windows. "What is it?" she whispered.

Andy pointed ahead, toward the horizon. "Enclave soldiers."

She knew she'd heard someone mention the Enclave before, but she couldn't remember where. As her eyes focused in the dark, she spotted a group of people in oversized black armor moving straight toward them. They seemed to be trying to be stealthy. Had she still been sleeping, she might not have noticed they were there. But now that she was looking for them, they were pathetically obvious. "Who are they?"

"They think themselves the long arm of the government, but don't believe it. I know what you're thinking, but trust me, you're no better off with them than with me. They're generally believed to be up to no good." He looked at Harris for confirmation. "Isn't that right?"

Harris nodded once. He didn't look overjoyed about being in agreement about something with Andy.

So she shouldn't try to get their attention and cry for help. So much for that idea. "Why are they coming this way? Do you think they know we're here?"

A blinding white light shone on them, and all three ducked below the car.

"This is Sergeant Amanda Hale of the Enclave Army," a voice called. It was metallic and echoey, but not like a robot's. Like someone talking into a tin can. "We have you surrounded. Submit peacefully and you will not be harmed."

Looking around, Lydia saw that they were indeed surrounded by a small number of soldiers, perhaps four in total, ducking behind other cars and the guardrail on the other side of the road. Apparently they were better at being sneaky than she'd thought. All wore the same black metal armor, making them look like a troop of alien robots. They all had guns with glowing green barrels.

"What do you want?" Andy called to the voice behind the light.

"We have tracked a piece of Enclave property to your location. We're here to retrieve it. Come out from behind the car."

_Enclave property?_ Lydia and Harris didn't have anything. "You stole from them?" Lydia accused Andy in a low voice.

"I thought she meant you. You didn't, either?" he asked.

Lydia shook her head.

"What on earth are they talking about, then?"

"We'd better stand up or they're going to start shooting," Harris said.

"I wouldn't be so eager," Andy said. "They might just shoot _you_ anyway."

"Well I'd sure hate to die and cheat you out of your 300 caps," Harris replied.

"150," Andy corrected.

"Why would they shoot you and not us?" Lydia asked.

"The Enclave is even less keen on mutants than the Brotherhood is, from what I've heard," Andy said. "They seem to have a bit of a superiority complex."

"But don't worry," Harris said. "They'll probably just shoot all of us."

"This is your last warning," came Hale's voice. "Surrender or we'll open fire." The soldiers around them raised their weapons.

Andy swore under his breath. "Okay, alright!" he called. He stood and raised his arms above his head in a non-combative gesture. Lydia and Harris slowly rose as well. They squinted in the light. There were heavy footsteps all around them as the soldiers closed in. Lydia instinctively moved in front of Harris. Not that it would probably help much if they decided they wanted him dead. Maybe they wouldn't notice he was a ghoul. _Yeah, right._

The glaring white light bounced as whoever was holding it came over to them. They didn't seem to mind shining it right in their eyes. Lydia looked away, but the contrast between the light and the dark of the night was such that she was blinded wherever she looked. That was probably the idea.

"I think your equipment may be malfunctioning, Ms. Hale," said Andy. "None of us has anything that belongs to the Enclave. Go ahead and look." He pointed to his sack on the ground.

"There," Hale said, ignoring Andy. "That's it. Take her. Kill the others."

Someone took hold of Lydia's arm and pulled her aside. "Hey, wait... " she started.

"Come with us, Miss," the man holding her said. "You'll be fine."

"But you don't need to kill them! Just-wait!" She looked back at Harris desperately. He looked back grimly. Andy just scowled.

Lydia tripped. She fell to her knees, but the gauntleted hand around her arm kept her from falling farther. As another soldier raised his gun to shoot Harris, Lydia got an idea. Sagging in the soldier's grip, she began convulsing wildly.

"Come on, cut it out," he said. He jerked her arm, but her only response was to shake harder. He lost his hold and she fell to the ground. She didn't even flinch as she hit. Pretty good acting, if she said so herself. The man swore. "Uh, sergeant?"

Everything was white again as the light shone on her. She chanced a glance up in the middle of her thrashing. Everyone was staring at her, including Harris and Andy. _Move, already._ On cue, Andy ducked over to his pack and quickly dug something out. Then her view was obstructed by the insectoid mask that appeared above her.

"She's faking it," Hale declared.

"I don't think so," the other man said. "Look at her."

Lydia rolled her eyes backward and drooled a little.

"Hey!" Someone fired a shot. It sounded a bit like her laser pistol, but there was an odd echo to it. "Shit. Grenade!"

There was a blur of movement as the man grabbed Lydia's arm again and fairly dragged her away. _BOOM._ She looked up. The windshield of the car they had been hiding behind had been blown out and there was an unnatural bulge in the dashboard. It was smoking heavily.

"It's going to blow," Hale shouted. "Get out! Move!"

Lydia half ran, half skimmed across the dirt as the soldier pulled her away from the car. They hadn't gotten far before there was a warning pop, then an explosion. The force of it threw them to the ground. Her ears were filled with so much fuzz and ringing that she wasn't sure if she was still hearing it or not. Bits of metal fell around them. A large chunk bounced off the man's armor, but thankfully none of it hit Lydia.

"Goddamn... " The soldier beside her breathed hard into his mask for a moment, then got up. He looked down at her. "You _were_ faking. Sneaky kid." He grasped her arm again and pulled her upright. Lydia coughed in the smoke and dust that had risen in the blast.

"Everyone alright?" one of the soldiers called out. They sounded off one at a time.

"You've got that girl, Kline?" Hale said.

"Right here," said the man holding onto her.

"Where did the other two go?"

"There." Someone pointed into the distance after the smoke had cleared. To Lydia's relief, two figures ran off to the northeast. Neither one looked injured. They were too far away now to shoot at.

Hale sighed. "How the hell did that happen? Why weren't you watching them, Jacobsen?"

"I'm sorry, sergeant, I was... distracted."

"Obviously. And why didn't you pick up the grenade and throw it somewhere else instead of just yelling about it like an idiot?"

"He dropped it inside the car, Ma'am. There wasn't enough time to get to it. I'll go after them," he volunteered.

"Don't bother," Sergeant Hale said. "Let's just get back to the camp before the kid's head explodes." She shook her head in disgust. "Christ. And you wonder why we get stuck on useless missions like this instead of something worthwhile." Her gaze fell on Lydia, and she marched over to her, metal boots tamping the earth to make a small cloud of dust behind her. Her hand jerked forward and she gripped a handful of the collar of Lydia's shirt. "Don't pull that shit again. We might need you alive, but that doesn't mean you can't be in pain. Understand?"

Lydia nodded, and Hale dropped her. "Move out!"


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Kline took out a pair of handcuffs and bound her wrist to his. It seemed to be necessary; she doubted that they, wearing all their armor, would be able to catch her if she ran. "I can't go this way," Lydia protested when he led her southwest. She told him what Shin had said about the collar exploding if she went away from Paradise Falls.

"Don't worry about that," he said. "It's not far off, and we've got someone who knows how to get it off without triggering the bomb."

Thankfully, he was correct and the camp was only a short distance away. It consisted of a small circle of canvas tents, some cargo crates, and two portable turrets, which beeped and looked at them with reflective camera lenses. Hale and Kline took her into one of the tents while the rest of the soldiers dispersed throughout the camp. A gas lamp dangling from the center of the ceiling wobbled as they came in, making shadows leap across the tent walls. A woman wearing a brown uniform sat underneath it at a foldable aluminum table, writing something in a notebook. She looked up at them, pushing a short curl of dark hair out of her eyes. "This is the escapee? Oh. Another slave collar."

"Yep. Can you take it from here, Carmen?" Hale said.

"Yes, Ma'am." She cleared everything off the table, and Kline told Lydia to sit in the stool opposite of the woman. He unlocked the handcuff from his wrist and fastened it onto the pole that held up the center of the tent.

Carmen briefly searched for several items in boxes around the tent, coming back with a screwdriver, a bobby pin, and a pair of wire cutters. She went to Lydia's side and tipped her chin up and to the side so that she could easily reach the left side of the collar: the bulky block that emitted heat while the rest of the collar was cool. Lydia was aware of the others taking a collective step back.

"You've done this before?" Lydia asked.

"Yes," the woman replied tonelessly. "Keep still. This is delicate work."

Lydia swallowed, and the collar moved up and down. She decided not to do that again. Carmen unscrewed something, setting down tiny screws on the table. She held her hand in place over the block and carefully pried a part of it open a miniscule amount. Picking up the bobby pin, she edged it inside. Lydia wished she could tell what she was doing. She realized that she was clenching her jaw and holding her breath, but she didn't dare relax now.

Having positioned the bobby pin appropriately, the woman pulled open the door in the block. Holding the bobby pin very still, she pulled the wire cutters from her pocket and reached them into the opened panel of the collar. _Snip._ _Snip. _Something clicked and the collar fell open. She took it off and set it on the table with the screws.

For the first time in almost a week, Lydia felt air on her bare neck. The lack of weight on her shoulders made her feel a little floaty. "Thank you," she said. Carmen ignored her and sat down at the table again. She got out another notebook, flipped to a blank page, and wrote across the top of it in pencil-_Vault Behavioral Project: 101._ Seeing Lydia lean forward to read it, she tipped it up so she couldn't see. Lydia sat back in her stool, and she kept writing.

Hale and Kline removed their helmets to reveal sweaty faces surrounded by manes of hat hair. They made themselves comfortable, sitting on crates and cots.

Lydia cleared her throat and tried to sound less nervous than she was. "Why, exactly, have you been looking for me?" She wasn't sure who to direct the question at, so she looked around at all of them. They stared back at her with mild amazement. It seemed that she was a bit of an anomaly for them. Harris was right about people from vaults attracting attention. Unfortunately, just changing her clothes didn't seem to be enough to evade these people.

Hale answered bitterly, "Do you have any idea how long we've been trying to get into that vault? Whenever we radio the inside, no one answers. If it weren't for the signals the Pip-Boys were sending out, we'd have thought that everyone in there was dead. When one of that vault's citizens suddenly waltzes out, it's not an opportunity to be wasted."

Lydia glanced at her Pip-Boy. It had never occurred to her that someone else might be monitoring the GPS signal. But why would they care? Why would they want to get into the vault? She opened her mouth to tell them she couldn't help them, that they wouldn't let _her_ back in either, then stopped. If that was all they wanted her for, it might be the only reason they hadn't killed her yet.

Carmen finally finished writing. "What's you're name?" she asked, pencil hovering over the paper. Lydia told her, and she scribbled something down.

"Your parents' names?"

"James and Catherine. Same last name." Why would she possibly want to know this? She wrote for much longer than it would take to jot down the names, and again Lydia itched to see what she was writing.

"Do you have any siblings?"

"No."

"Grandparents' names?"

"Um... I don't know."

She wrote something down anyway.

"Aunts and Uncles?"

"I don't have any." The woman nodded slowly, never taking her eyes from her paper. Hale and Kline watched Lydia like she was a TV, and she fidgeted uncomfortably. "What do you want to know this for?" she asked. No one answered her this time.

"How many people are currently living in Vault 101?"

Lydia shrugged weakly. "I don't know the exact number... "

"Approximate."

"Like... seventy?" _Scribble, scribble._ Shouldn't they know this, if they monitored the Pip-Boys? They just wanted to know if _she _knew.

"How will you know she's not lying?" Hale interrupted.

"I wouldn't worry about that, Ma'am. If she is, it will become clear soon, and we can always get the real answers from her later. But that in itself would be an interesting result, if she did decide to make something up." Hale nodded"Give me the names of all the Vault 101 citizens you can think of."

At first Lydia was reluctant to give them the information, but she could think of no reason _not _to tell the truth, especially with Hale's threat that hanging over her head. They were all safe in the vault, anyway, weren't they? She listed everyone in her class, then all of their family members, then everyone who came in for regular checkups at the clinic. She paused between names so the uniformed woman had time to write them down.

The questions went on and on. Who was the current Overseer? How many times had the vault been opened before? How did she open the door? What laws were currently enforced in the vault? Who was on the security force? What weapons did they carry? What does the school curriculum entail? After a while she noticed that she sometimes repeated questions from earlier. She thought it was a mistake the first time, but then she kept doing it. _Checking for consistency._ As Lydia answered, she looked discreetly around the tent. She had to get out of there. She had to find Harris. There had to be some way out. Maybe she could pick the lock on the handcuffs...

Her gaze fell on the table. The bobby pin was still sitting there next to the collar and the screwdriver.

She moved her eyes onward, not lingering and drawing attention to it. That was it. That little hair pin was her chance. Could she take it without anyone noticing? Doubtful. But what else could she do? It was either try to escape and possibly be caught and punished for it, or sit there until they ran out of questions and decided to kill her. _Or maybe they won't kill me. Maybe they'll just let me leave._ She glanced up at Hale, who looked no less intimidating than before. Seeing her looking, the Enclave sergeant straightened and glared back at her, the way one might look at a disobedient child. _Yeah. They'll let me go, just like they were going to let Andy and Harris go. _

As she answered the uniformed woman's questions, she grew more and more drowsy. She didn't know what time it had been when the soldiers came to the circle of cars, but it was very late... or very early. Now the sun was beginning to shine into the tent, and Lydia's shadow fell across the table. So, it was only natural for her to lean forward and rest her arm on the table. Or so she hoped. The soldiers watched her intently still, though she could see exhaustion wearing on them, too. Carmen showed no such signs of fatigue, firing questions incessantly as the hours dragged by.

"I think that's enough for now," Hale finally said.

"Yes Ma'am. We can continue tomorrow." It had been very quiet while Carmen was questioning, and now that it was over, the rustling of the everyone stretching and getting up was noticeably noisy. Out of the corner of her eye, Lydia caught Hale turn to pick up her helmet, and Carmen was absorbed in her notes, still writing. There wasn't going to be a better chance than this. She casually swept her arm slightly to the side as she pulled it from the tabletop. The bobby pin made a tiny noise as it scraped across the metal table, but her Pip-Boy made a louder one. It was enough to cover the sound of the pin as it dropped off the table and into her lap.

Hale looked at Kline. "You can have first watch. I'll tell everyone else to get some sleep."

"Right." He bent down beside her and unlocked the handcuffs. Hale moved past her. She shifted to get out of their way, and as she moved her free arm over her lap, she tucked the pin into the space between her Pip-Boy and her arm. To her surprise, no one stopped. No one saw. She watched Kline and tried not to look suspicious. Her heart pounded as Carmen cleared everything off the table, but she didn't even look twice at the objects before dropping them into into a toolbox. She left the collar on the table and went back to her notebook.

Kline stood up easily, seeming unencumbered by his armor. "This way." Lydia stumbled along beside him on legs that had fallen asleep. They walked past the turrets again, which, eerily, turned to follow them with their cameras. The soldier took her into a smaller tent that contained little more than a cot on one side and a table and stool on the other. There wasn't a pole in the middle like the other one, so he closed her empty handcuff around the legs of his cot. Lydia leaned against the wall of the tent, but it gave precariously. She settled into a cross-legged position instead.

Kline unrolled the cloth door to the tent so that it hovered just above the ground, and began removing his armor. It looked like it would be difficult, but he did it quickly and easily. He was a pretty big guy, even without the armor. She supposed you'd have to be to walk around in that outfit all day.

He went to a crate and pulled out a bottle of water and a packet of something. He started up a small propane stove and poured the water into a pot. _Instant coffee?_

"Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked.

"I've got to watch you, remember? Which means keeping my eyes open."

"Not like I'm going anywhere," she muttered, raising her handcuffed wrist.

"Yeah, well. You've fooled us once before. Maybe you'll do it again."

After a few minutes steam rose from his water, so he turned off the propane feed, dumped in the contents of the packet into a ceramic mug, and poured the water in. "Do you want to sleep?"

"Why?"

"You can use my bed, if you want."

"Oh. Thanks," she said, but she didn't move. Kline sipped the coffee. Lydia had never had it before, but it looked unappetizing. "So," she said, "this is some kind of sociology experiment. You guys want to know about what's happened inside the vaults since the Great War." She wouldn't have asked in Hale's presence, but Kline seemed less uptight than her and the others.

He looked at her over the rim of his cup. "I'm not supposed to tell you," he said slowly. Which indicated, to her, that she was correct. But he knew that, judging by the meaningful look he shot her. Why was he doing that? How much trouble would he get into for telling her what they were up to?

"Why not?"

"Can't tell you that either. Sorry."

"What _is_ the Enclave?" she said. "Can you at least tell me that?"

"Of course." He visibly loosened, taking another swig of brown liquid. "We're the American Government. What's left of it. We follow Colonel Augustus Autumn, and he takes orders directly from the president, John Henry Eden." He said it in a quick, monotonous manner. It seemed to be something he had heard and repeated many times. "Haven't you seen the eyebots?"

"Oh. I guess I have." After her initial curiosity, the little flying robots had become just another part of the landscape. She'd quickly figured out that you couldn't communicate with them, and if you tried to touch them, you'd get a faceful of laser.

"I didn't think there would be any government out here, when I was in the vault," she said. "And if I did, _this_ isn't what I would've expected," she muttered to herself. Kline heard anyway.

"And what did you expect?"

"Well, I had the impression that the military didn't just go around killing its own citizens."

"Looks like you were wrong."

"Are you going to kill me, when that woman is done asking questions?"

"That's not for me to decide."

God, she had to get out of there. She looked him in the eye. "I don't want to die."

That got him. She didn't think of herself as some great manipulator of people, but she could pull on a cute face when she wanted to. He stared at his coffee, swirling it around in the bottom of the cup. "Yeah, I don't know a lot of people that do. Go to sleep, why don't you?"

Her handcuffs clanged against the metal legs of the cot as she crawled onto it. She had to hold one arm above her head while she lay there, but it was still infinitely more comfortable than the ground. At least if she died trying to escape today, she had gotten to lay on something other than the ground one last time. "Thanks," she said again. "For the bed." Might as well try to stay on his good side. Maybe if he felt guilty enough he'd take pity on her. It was worth a try, at least.

"Yeah, sure," was all he said.

She closed her eyes and didn't move. She slowed her breathing and let her muscles go slack, pretending to be asleep in the hopes that he'd eventually leave to go to the bathroom or something.

Then she woke up. She didn't remember falling asleep, but there she was, waking up. She checked her Pip-Boy. Almost an hour had passed since she'd gotten on the bed. She twisted her neck to see what the soldier was doing. He was sitting at the table, propping his head up with his arm. His hand was squashing his face into a comical expression. Lydia blinked, struggling to focus her eyes through post-sleep bleariness. When it cleared, she saw that his eyes were closed. He was asleep.

Without hesitation she sat up, held her Pip-Boy to widen the gap between it and her skin, and shook it to make the bobby pin fall out. She waited for it to drop onto the bed, but nothing came out. She peered down into the gap. There was nothing there but pale skin. It was gone. She swore quietly. It must have fallen out while she was sleeping. For several minutes she ran her hand over the cloth of the bed and her clothes, fruitlessly searching the creases for the tiny metal clip. It was nowhere on her or on the cot, nor on the ground next to her.

Finally, just as she was about to give up hope, she spotted it on the dirt floor underneath the bed. She could just barely see it lying there in the shadows. She had to lean over the side of the bed to take it, and the metal of the cot creaked loudly. She grabbed the pin and looked up to see if she'd woken Kline, but he hadn't moved.

She stuck her head and shoulders over the top edge of the bed so she had a good view of the cuffs. On the big rectangular bit next to her wrist was a tiny keyhole. The bobby pin was already a little bent from previous use, but not enough to make it an ineffective pick. She unfolded it and stuck the flat side into the hole. It fit perfectly. She closed her eyes as she felt the inside of the lock with the metal prong. There were walls on three sides, but toward the inside there was a space where the key was meant to enter. She took out the bobby pin and bit it, bending the end. Now, twisting it inside the hole, she could feel a catch. She pushed against it, and the ring around her wrist released with a small click. _Well, that wasn't too hard._

She shed the handcuffs, which left red lines on her arm. She was rubbing them away when Kline spoke.

"_Sneaky kid."_ He stared at her incredulously. There was a string of sleepy drool on his cheek.

Lydia wanted to run. Every muscle in her body screamed the desire, but she knew it was pointless. He didn't have the armor to weigh him down now. He'd definitely catch her before she even got out of the camp.

The soldier slowly wiped his face. Lydia sat back on the bed and looked back at him, waiting for him to decide what to do with her.

He stood and went to the cloth door of the tent, pushing it aside so he could look out. "Looks like everyone's still sleeping." he said quietly. He sat back down at the table. He took a heavy breath and lowered his voice so that she could barely hear him. "It's too bad, but I fell asleep. When I woke up, you were gone. Nothing I could do about it."

"What?"

He leaned on his arm again, and closed his eyes. He sat there motionless, as though, like he said, he hadn't woken up at all. Lydia couldn't believe what she was seeing. She leaped off the bed and dashed to the door before he could change his mind. She paused there before she left, giving him one last glance. He opened one eye to look back at her.

She nodded to him uncertainly, and left.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"That was close," Andy said when he had enough breath to speak. They were just passing a cliff he recognized: the one with the solitary tree trunk sticking sideways out of the top. They must have run several miles. There was no sign of the Enclave. He doubted they would follow them. They were after that girl, not them. It was too bad she got away, though. Grouse would have a fit. That would be the third collar that he and Shin had lost, and they weren't cheap. _It would only be the first_, he thought glumly, _except that that woman is a fool with the emotional control of a toddler. _It seemed like she ended up killing half the people they captured. Not for the first time, he half hoped she'd get herself killed before she got back to Paradise Falls. He needed a new partner.

"That was some quick thinking on your friend's part," he said. "We'd be little more than stains on that car right now if it wasn't for her."

The ghoul didn't respond. Andy hadn't really expected him to; he was talking more to himself, anyway. The girl, Lydia, hadn't really seemed to understand the seriousness of her situation, but the man certainly did. At least he hadn't tried to kill him. That happened every once in a while. It always made him a little depressed. It was just so pathetic.

Still, he always made sure to stay behind the ghoul and keep his weapon in an easily accessible place.

"You're not mad at me for leaving her behind, I hope. I wouldn't go up against one person in power armor, let alone four." He watched the ghoul's back moving rhythmically with his steps. He showed no acknowledgement of Andy's comments. "I got the impression that you were someone she'd hired to escort her. But if that's the case, why are you sulking about her being gone? She didn't pay you in advance?"

He heard the ghoul let out a small sigh.

"No... Is she a relative? Sister? Daughter?" He paused, considering other options. "... Lover?"

"If you don't stop talking, I'm going to kill you," the ghoul said matter-of-factly.

"Hm," Andy said. "_Rude._" He smirked triumphantly at his reaction, but discreetly slowed to widen the gap between them.

-lll-

Lydia would have given anything to get those sunglasses back. Right about now they were probably on the head of some Wasteland scavenger. She held her hand up on her brow to block the sunlight. She had walked for long enough that it was low in the sky now, shining directly in her eyes, and she could hardly see where she was going. She'd been so excited to see the sun when she was plotting her escape from Vault 101; now all she wanted was for that damn yellow orb to go away. She might have laughed at the irony if she was in a better mood.

Her stomach growled. Thirst and hunger were creeping up on her. Perhaps she should have taken some water from the Enclave stores. But then, she didn't know where they kept it, and she had already taken the time to get the slave collar and a gun from Carmen's tent. It had probably been a good idea to quit while she was ahead and get out of there.

She checked her Pip-Boy again to make sure she was going in the right direction. Not that she had any idea where Paradise Falls was, but for the entire time she'd been traveling with Shin and Andy they had been going north-northwest, so she continued in that direction.

She had spent about half a day at the Enclave camp, but she hoped that if she hurried she could catch up with Andy and Harris before they got to Paradise Falls. Andy walked almost as slow as Shin, and he slept for a long time. Still, the result of this was that she was walking much quicker than usual. In her eagerness to get away from the camp, she'd already run for a mile or two just after she left, and she'd never really recovered.

She knew that she could only ignore her thirst and hunger and the pain in her side and eyes for so long. Unfortunately, there had been no conveniently placed defunct grocery stores on her journey so far. She and Harris had passed plenty of places like that before they ran into Andy and Shin. She supposed that he knew where they all were by now. It was obvious that he knew his way around, even without a map.

However, going back was out of the question. There wasn't enough time to go to one of the places on the map and still come back and free Harris. Anyway, she didn't want to run into any of those soldiers again.

She kept going after the sun set. Hopefully Andy and those soldiers would stop not long after it got dark. It seemed that everything out here shut down when the sun went down. Probably because they didn't have clocks. Or lights, a lot of the time. That reminded her, she could turn up her Pip-Boy brightness to the high setting. She went to change it, but thought better of it. With her luck, it would attract animals or raiders.

Ugh. She'd almost forgotten about the raiders. And the wild dogs. And the Yao Guai. And the super mutants. She stopped walking. When she looked at it that way, slavers and the Enclave seemed to be the least of her worries. She'd probably die out here before she'd gotten halfway to Megaton.

Suddenly she remembered her first night out of the vault. She thought she was going to die then, too. It was weird, but she had totally forgotten about it. She checked her radiation level, and it still read as over a thousand rads. _Well. I've cheated death once, now. Maybe I can do it again. _

She looked at the pistol she'd stolen from the woman, Carmen. She'd gone to her tent to get the collar, but as she was leaving she saw an ammo box by the door. Amazingly, it was unlocked, and inside was this pistol. It looked funny, almost like a toy. It had a glowing green tip like the others the soldiers had used, and it was almost as light as the laser pistol. She held it up experimentally, feeling the grip and the distribution of weight. Pointing it at a dead tree trunk, she pulled the trigger once. There was that echoey sound, and something green shot out of the barrel. It left a blob of green goo on the wood, but it quickly dissolved, eating through the tree in the process. When it was finished, there was a wide hole left in it. "Now _that's_ something I haven't seen before." The edges of the hole were glowing green and dripping bits of goo and liquified wood. There was an iridescent puddle inside the hole. She resisted the urge to touch it.

Setting the pistol aside, she sat down and took a closer look at the metal collar. It was a fairly simple device, really. It didn't take long to figure out how it worked and how she could get it off safely. "If only I could do the same with my Pip-Boy..."

It was another few miles before she finally came upon the first building she'd seen all day. And it was an odd one, huge and all by itself out in the middle of nowhere.

Wait. Hadn't she seen this house before? She stopped at the fence that surrounded it and looked at the debris scattered around the yard. _That jet addict's house. I wonder if he's gotten ahold of any more mines. _She didn't even know what mines looked like, actually, but she searched the yard for them anyway. She circled around to the front of the house. There was an opening in the fence there, and a path leading to the door. There wasn't anything that looked like it might explode if she touched it, but still... She picked up a handful of gravel and threw it into the yard. Nothing happened. She got another handful and threw it to the other side of the path. She did it again and again until she'd covered everywhere near the path.

Taking a deep breath, she tip-toed to the porch. As luck would have it, there were no bombs lying in wait for her. Just as she reached the porch, something to her right made a noise. She jumped, but it was just a radroach emerging from under the stairs. She watched it scuttle off down the path, then approached the door. She knocked. There was a window next to the door, but it was boarded up. She could see the cracks between the planks darken, though, when someone moved behind them.

"Who's there?"

"Um...my name's Lydia, I..."

"Speak the hell up. I can't hear you."

"My name is Lydia," she nearly shouted. "I came here with Harris a while back."

"...Harris?"

"Yes."

There was a series of clicks and scrapes as various locks on the other side of the door were undone. The door opened a crack and the man's face appeared. He was even more haggard than she remembered, though he looked more sober. "You bring more jet?"

"Uh...no."

His face fell. "Oh. What do you want?"

"I...need some help. Harris and I were separated yesterday when I was kidnapped by the Enclave."

The man nodded. "Those black armor guys. I saw them come by here."

"Yeah. I escaped, but I've been walking all day and I haven't had anything to eat or drink since yesterday. So...I was wondering if, you know, you had any water..."

"What'll you give me for it?" He didn't seem fazed by her being kidnapped. Perhaps it wasn't an unusual occurrence.

Lydia currently had exactly two possessions aside from the clothes on her back-the unlocked slave collar and her stolen gun. She held them up, but he shook his head.

She scratched a dry spot on her arm anxiously. "I haven't seen any water for miles, and you're the only person who lives around here. Please, it's just this once."

"Why would I give up some of my water to some chick I hardly know?" The man gave her a hard look. "Pretty wimpy kid, aren't you? First mooching off the ghoul, now you're trying to mooch off me."

At this point, Lydia was tired, hungry, worried about Harris, and had a dehydration headache and a side ache. Her temper was shorter than usual. "I'm not mooching." She regretted it as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but a momentum of righteous anger was building up and it was hard to stop. "What do you know about it, anyway? Do you ever even leave this house? I bet you never worked a day in your life. You probably inherited money from someone and now all you do is waste it away obsessing over chems." She huffed for a moment. "Fine, then, if you're really that selfish. Just don't accuse me of the same thing." She stormed off.

When she was halfway down the path, laughter erupted behind her. She turned in confusion, and the man was still standing there in the doorway, cackling.

"What?" she nearly shouted at him.

"Do you know, the first time I met Harris, it went just about exactly like this?" he said as his laughter died down. "We had almost the exact same conversation. He was a kid then, even younger than you. Don't worry. He grew out of that kind of temperamental crap. So will you." The humor slowly left his eyes as he regarded her, and his face was returned to its previous perpetually tired and depressing state. "Just wait a minute. I'll be right back." He retreated into the depths of the house, locking the door behind him.

After a time he reemerged, holding several objects. He held out a bottle of water to her. Without thinking twice, she snatched it and drank the whole thing all at once. It almost hurt her dry throat as she swallowed, but she gulped it down anyway. The man watched her wipe her mouth on her sleeve, and handed her a bag of chips and a a carton of dried apples.

"Thank you," she said as she opened the apples.

"It isn't charity," he replied. "I expect you two to be back with more jet, and I'm not paying for it this time."

"Fine," she said. "I'm sure that's fine."

"You _are_ going to find him, right?"

She nodded, biting a chewy chunk of apple. "Yes. I'll find him," she said resolutely, assuring herself as much as the jet addict.

"Mmm-hmm. I hope you do. Not just because of the jet, either. I'm kind of attached to the guy. He's not a bad sort. It's a shame for him to become a slave. He's got a sense of... whaddayacallit... integrity. He won't try to cheat me, I think. That's hard to find in a trader, let alone a chem dealer. And it's a pain having to find a dealer in the first place."

"Integrity? That's not a word I'd expect to hear in congruence with 'chem dealer'."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're too good for chems, huh?"

"I don't approve of abusing them."

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. In any case, you're gonna be a dealer too. If you plan on keeping your promise, anyways."

"That's different."

"Oh, it is, huh? Just remember, we all do what we have to to survive: you, me, Harris, everyone. It's really none of your business whether I use jet or not, and if I didn't get it from you, I'd just get it from someone else." He chuckled a bit. "Anyways, if it wasn't for people like me, there'd be nobody left for you to feel superior to."

Lydia set aside the empty apple box and tore into the potato chips. Suddenly she remembered something he'd said earlier. "How did you know he was a slave? I didn't say that." She was eager to change the subject, anyway.

"It's not hard to guess," the man said, gesturing to the collar she held. "And... I saw him go by here earlier."

"You _saw_ him? How long ago was he here?"

"Few hours ago. Had some other guy with him. It's weird; usually slavers go around in gangs. You see either a group or none."

"Why didn't you help him?" she exclaimed.

"What am I, his mother?"

She stared at him. "You are a horrid person. Really."

"It's not like I could get the collar off anyway. I don't know how _you_ managed it, but if you could do it again I'd appreciate it. I really don't want to have to find another dealer. I'm getting too old for wandering the wastes."

"I will." She stood and dusted chip crumbs off of her clothes. "Not for you, though," she assured him.

"Fine by me, so long as you do it. They went that way." He pointed. North-northwest. She followed his arm with her eyes, looking out at the horizon.

"Thanks."

The slam of the door was his only response.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

The Enclave soldiers would be following Lydia now, tracing her footsteps using the GPS embedded in her Pip-Boy. Unfortunately, the GPS device was buried at the bottom of the computer. She'd seen schematics for it somewhere, a long time ago. She'd have to destroy the entire device to get to it. For now she would just have to outrun them long enough to find Harris and figure out how to get rid of it.

She tried to put the Enclave out of her mind, but it was difficult. She hardly had the nerve to stop to sleep, so she walked late into the night and awoke early in the morning to continue as soon as the sun rose. Whether this overexertion was actually advantageous was uncertain: it was quite possible that the lack of sleep and the excess walking simply made her more tired and slowed her down. And anyway, the Enclave had to sleep, too, right? They wouldn't be spending that time catching up to her. Still, she wasn't going to take any chances if she could help it. If they caught her again, it was unlikely she would be able to escape again.

She scratched the back of her neck thoughtfully. Perhaps it was a stretch to call it an 'escape'. She still didn't understand exactly what had happened. What did the soldier have to gain by letting her go? Maybe she was more manipulative than she thought.

A fly buzzed around her, and she shooed it away. The sun was high now, and she was sweating. She could smell herself, she noticed. _I really need a shower._ Two more flies circled her head. One landed on her arm, and she slapped at it. "Come on, I'm not _that_ dirty."

It flew away lazily, tracing a labyrinthine path. It made its way to the left, toward a clump of dead brush. As Lydia watched, it joined a small cloud of its fellows, circling above the dry branches. She followed it. Not surprisingly, the smell grew stronger as she got closer. _That smell isn't me-there's something dead over there. _Morbid curiosity propelled her forward.

Sure enough, an arm came into view. Then a leg, then a torso, lying in the shadow of the bushes. It was an old man. There was no blood. No obvious injuries. He might have been sleeping, except... Something was off. Lydia couldn't place it, but there was something about him that looked very wrong, and there was no doubt that he was dead. He must not have been there long, for he hadn't yet begun to visibly decompose. His mouth was still half open. A fly crawled across his lip.

"Ugh." She chased away the flies, but they came back. Without thinking, she reached down and closed the man's mouth. Her fingers froze as she touched the cold, limp flesh. It was the first time she'd touched a dead person. She was lucky enough not to have had anyone die in the three years she served as the vault doctor. She had always dreaded having to deal with a dead body. It wasn't as creepy as she thought it would be.

She wondered what happened to him. What circumstances had led to the death of a man who had managed to stay alive for so long already? He didn't seem to be injured. Exposure, maybe, or starvation? She was suddenly reminded of the cannibal woman she'd seen. She had been devouring a body that she supposedly found. Maybe coming across a corpse wasn't incredibly unusual in the Wasteland. She felt a pang of embarrassment for the way she'd argued with Harris about the woman.

"Don't worry," she said to the dead man. "I'll never be _that_ hungry."

Instead of a response, she heard a noise behind her. Something padded faintly across the ground, like footsteps. Gripping her pistol tighter, she turned around slowly, so as not to startle whoever or whatever it was.

Her heart dropped when she saw the Yao Guai. It was bigger than she remembered. A low growl emanated from deep in its throat. She wasn't sure if she should try to act threatening or not. She decided on the latter, and kept the corpse between her and the monster. If it didn't think she was competing for possession of it, it would probably go for the easier meal and leave her alone. She hoped. She backed away, and the thing followed her with rheumy, clouded eyes. At first it did nothing. Then, moving with the grace and care of a cat, it put out one paw, then another. It arched its back and bared its teeth at her. It stepped over the body without looking at it. Its eyes were locked on her.

A kind of primal terror gripped Lydia as she realized it wasn't interested in leaving her alone. Fear pushed reason aside, driven by the threat of imminent death. She turned and ran, heedless of the futility of trying to escape. It was upon her almost instantly. It only lightly batted her arm, but it was enough to send her flying.

She scrambled to her feet and took off again, with a similar result. She cried out as long claws raked across her back. The blow pushed her to the ground, and she stayed down this time. Running wasn't going to work. She watched the Yao Guai approach as though it had all the time in the world. In a flash she raised the gun she still held in her left hand. Maybe the Yao Guai had been shot at before and recognized the weapon, or maybe it was just reacting to her sudden movement. It darted forward and knocked the pistol from her hand before she could fire. It skidded out of reach.

Though VATS hadn't activated, time seemed to stop as the Yao Guai bore down on her. It pressed a hairy, mottled arm down on her chest, squeezing air from her lungs. The gouges on her back burned as they pressed against the ground. _This is it. I'm going to die._

She must have been in shock, because at that moment, the thought didn't frighten her. Now that she could do no more to defend herself, she felt oddly at peace. She braced herself and opened her eyes and ears. You only die once. Might as well experience it in full.

The Yao Guai leaned down, mouth open and displaying a large collection of jagged teeth. Lydia couldn't help it: she flinched. Its jaws snapped shut, but bit only the air. Its teeth gnashed in front of her face. It removed its paw from her chest, and she gasped in air. None of her ribs had broken, yet.

The Yao Guai growled at her. She waited, but it showed no inclination to kill her immediately. Hope surged back through her. It was just playing with her. It wanted her to run. It wanted a chase.

When she didn't move for a moment, the Yao Guai became impatient and nipped her shoulder. A nip from that thing was nothing to scoff at. Lydia could tell without seeing it that the bite was deep. She felt blood seeping out and sticking to her shirt. She was probably just imagining the mocking tone of the Yao Guai's roar.

Scooting backward, she pulled herself out from under it. She tried to ignore the stabbing pain in her back and shoulder. Her gun was tantalizingly close. If she could just fire one shot before the Yao Guai attacked, that might be enough to stagger it. It might give her just enough time to kill it.

She backed toward the gun. It couldn't have been more than 10 yards away. _Too slow and it might get bored and attack. Too fast and it'll get startled and attack anyway. _Seven yards now. The Yao Guai roared again, making her jump. It pawed the ground impatiently. Five yards away. Three. So close, yet so far.

The Yao Guai pounced. Lydia turned and dove to the gun. She whipped around and fired. The shot went wide, completely missing its target. The black furry mass was dangerously close. She pulled the trigger again, and a flash of green scorched the Yao Guai's side. It yelped and recoiled. Lydia leapt to her feet and ran, taking aim at the same time. It was coming at full speed now. It had been hurt-it wasn't playing a game anymore. She missed once more, but as it got closer her target got bigger. On her second try, she hit the left side of its head. It screeched in agony, but didn't stop.

Suddenly the ground went out from under Lydia's feet. She'd backed into a wide, shallow ditch. She thudded onto her back and slid to the bottom of the ditch as the Yao Guai leapt over the edge.

Just as it was about to barrel into her, a thin strip of neon green sliced through the animal's mouth and out the back of its head. Its legs gave out, but momentum carried it forward. There was no time to move. It crashed on top of her, pinning her underneath it.

It moved no more. It had been killed the instant she shot it. Now it was draped over the better part of her entire body.

She squeezed her right arm out from under it, but her left, along with the gun, was stuck and wouldn't budge no matter which way she pulled it. With her free arm she pushed the body away from herself. It gave only slightly, and flopped back into place the moment she let go. It was not enough to free herself.

Her Pip-Boy chose that moment to inject her with the VATS mystery solution. "A little late, stupid thing," she muttered.

She shivered as the chemicals pumped through her body. For the next five minutes she shoved at the body with renewed vigor, but finally gave up. Even with the feverish energy VATS granted her, she simply wasn't strong enough to move it, let alone when she was running on little sleep and no food. She was so exhausted...

It was hard to breathe under the weight of the dead Yao Guai. She wasn't getting enough air, she could tell. She was getting lightheaded. She closed her eyes.

She wasn't sure how long she laid there. It was hard to tell without being able to see the clock on her Pip-Boy. The sun was moving across the sky, but she'd forgotten where it had been to begin with. A few times she thought she heard footsteps nearby. She called out, but if there was someone there, they didn't answer.

At first she thought she might suffocate. The inability to draw in large amounts of air at a time was nerve-wracking, but she seemed to be getting enough for the moment. It left her tired, but conscious.

She'd probably starve to death, or succumb to exposure or thirst.

No, actually, some other animal (_or person, _she thought with a shudder) would probably find her and eat her alive long before that happened. She sighed.

What would happen to Harris now? If she didn't rescue him, no one would. His face appeared in her mind: the expression of despair he'd been wearing as he realized, still under the influence of the mesmetron, that they'd been enslaved. She moaned miserably. He'd saved her life so many times, and now that he really needed _her,_ she couldn't help him.

There was another distant noise that sounded vaguely like footsteps. It was probably just wishful thinking, but it was worth a try.

"Hello?" She called weakly. "Help!" No one answered, of course. The sound continued. Probably something rolling across the ground. Hopefully not something that would want to eat her.

She closed her eyes as she listened to it. She was alarmed to find that it was coming nearer. _Those are definitely footsteps. Human footsteps. _Why hadn't they answered her, then? She twisted to look, but she couldn't see that far behind her. So she waited helplessly for whoever it was.

Booted feet came to a stop in front of her, inadvertently kicking a cloud of dust up around her face. She followed the legs upward. Blue pants. Padded knees. A leather jacket. A switchblade in one hand.

_Oh god. It can't be... _

Sure enough, perched above the jacket was that familiar princely face and absurd greased hair.

"_Butch?"_


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

Butch was looking down at Lydia and the dead Yao Guai in a disturbed way. When she said his name, his eyes widened. "_Lydia?_" Now he looked downright horrified. "What the hell happened? I didn't even recognize you. You look like crap."

"Gee, thanks."

"I mean it. Even worse than usual. You sick or something?"

"I don't look that bad," she insisted, though she hadn't had a good look at herself in weeks. "Can you get this thing off of me?"

He looked at it nervously. "Is it... dead?"

Lydia pointedly looked at its head, which was half melted into a mess of glowing grey-green goo.

"Uh... okay." He knelt down and grimaced as he saw the thing's patchy skin up close. "Gross." He shoved it away and it rolled off of Lydia. She took a deep breath as she stood and steadied herself. She couldn't bring herself to thank him.

"That was for my mom," he said.

"What?"

"That was for when you saved my mom, from the radroaches. You know... when your dad... I didn't forget that you did that, ya know. I told you I wouldn't."

"Oh. Yeah. Because of course, you would never just help someone out of the goodness of your heart." She arched an eyebrow at him. "I didn't know I could cash in on that. Why did you keep beating me up so much after that, then?"

"Hey, you were asking for it those times. That doesn't count."

"I was definitely _not_ asking for it."

"You were so! You and that daddy's girl Amata were always dissing the Tunnel Snakes!"

"I don't have time for this." She gritted her teeth and forced the words out. "_Thank you_...but I have to go." She would have liked to know what in the world he was doing there, but it wasn't worth having to actually talk to him. She picked up her gun and stepped around him.

"Hey, how did you get stuck under...under that thing, anyway?"

"I shot it and it fell on me."

"Heh. That was dumb."

"Well I didn't exactly plan on that last part."

"How did you even survive this long? Everyone in the vault thought you'd be dead by now."

"Will you shut up? Why are you following me?"

"Hey, I just saved your life! You don't have to be such a bitch."

_Don't remind me._ Why did it have to be him? Why, out of everyone in the world, did _he_ have to be the one to come to her aid?

She turned to look at him. The nervousness was gone from his face, replaced with his usual cocky sneer. She couldn't even look at him without deep-seated hate rising from the pit of her stomach. She couldn't remember a time when that idiotic pretty-boy face hadn't inspired dread and anger in her.

"What?" he said. "You got a problem?"

He was still giving her that snotty smile, like he was the goddamn king of the Wasteland.

"Do I _have a problem? _You and your ridiculous gang have been making my life miserable since the day I was born, and now that you've helped me _one time,_ you act like we're best buddies? You think it makes us even or something? Of course I have a problem, you...you...Ugh, you're worse than raiders!"

"Hey," he snarled. He took hold of her shirt roughly and pulled her up nearly off the ground. "You watch what you say about me. I'm still a Tunnel Snake, and we don't take shit from anybody. And we're not ridiculous! And, hell, you only helped _me_ one time, so, yeah, we're even."

"I'll say whatever I want. Do you honestly believe I deserved everything you did to me? You once started a fight with me at my own birthday party. What kind of person _does_ that? You stole my sweetroll! You-"

Lydia stopped talking. She stared at Butch, who was glowering back at her, inches from her face. She snorted. She shook in his grip as she giggled.

"What the hell's so funny?"

She laughed harder, but quieted down quickly when her cuts started to sting.

"You're always laughing at me." He shoved her away.

She almost felt bad, then. It was true, after all. He was very easy to make fun of. "No. It's just... It occurs to me that you're probably not actually as bad as a raider. I'm sorry, but I really do have to go." She turned away from him.

It wasn't long before she heard him walking behind her. When she looked back at him, he was scanning the terrain suspiciously. He still had his switchblade out. "What?" he asked defensively.

Lydia tried to ignore him. For once, he was quiet, at least. It was weird seeing him out here after all this time. The vault and the Wasteland were separate in her mind; everything and everyone she knew from the vault was supposed to stay there, and she hadn't expected to encounter them ever again. He didn't belong here.

It was kind of funny to have him following her around like a lost puppy.

"Don't those cuts hurt?" he asked after a while.

She rolled her eyes to herself. "Yes. How bad are they?"

"You're the doctor, not me. They look pretty bad, though. Your back is all bloody."

"It's not still bleeding, is it?"

"I don't think so. But you're all dirty. You were lying on your back when I found you, right? Aren't you not supposed to get dirt into cuts or something?"

"Yeah, but there's not a lot I can do about that right now."

There was the sound of an explosion somewhere far away. Lydia was used to hearing them, but Butch jumped. "What's that?"

She shrugged. "A grenade or something. No, it was bigger than that...Maybe a car engine exploding. It's nothing to worry about as long as it's not too close."

"Stuff just...explodes a lot, out here, huh?"

"Yep." _Just go away, already._

He paused. "Are there a lot of roaches around?"

"Don't worry, Butch, I'll protect you from the big scary bugs."

"Shut up. I was just asking."

They passed a crude sign pointing to Megaton. Lydia looked at her map.

"We're pretty close to the vault. When did you leave?" she asked. Then she winced. She should have been ignoring him, not asking more questions. It just slipped out.

"This morning."

_Ah-ha._ No wonder he was still so clean.

"Hey, Lyd... A lot of stuff happened after you left, you know... "

Her steps slowed. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Mr. Almodovar is dead."

She didn't say anything.

"Killed, actually."

"You-you killed the Overseer?"

"Not me," he said. "We found him dead-stabbed-in the east hallway a few days ago. We don't know who did it. We all _wanted_ to, that's for sure. The guy was even more insane after you left. I thought you'd be happy about it, after what he did to Jonas and your dad."

"I... " Lydia didn't know what to say. This was unthinkable. Who would-who _could _do that? People didn't just murder each other in Vault 101 (well, unless the murderer was the Overseer or his security goons-then everything was square), and they certainly didn't get away with it if they did. Perhaps the Overseer was right to try to keep the vault closed off from the Wasteland. There was something about the wastes that made people into animals. After Lydia opened the door, that Wasteland curse had contaminated the vault.

She shook her head. It wasn't like her to be this irrational.

Butch told her everything that had happened since she left. It seemed that she wasn't the only one who had wanted out. After she left, others started talking about what was outside the vault. It had been 200 years since the bombs fell. Many citizens, particularly the younger generation, felt it was time to open the vault, at least just to see what was left of the world, if not to leave forever.

People tried to reason with the Overseer, pointing out that they would have to leave soon anyway. The population was dwindling, and they needed to widen their gene pool. Of course, he refused to even consider opening the door. The rebels reacted violently. The security team could hardly keep control. The civil unrest escalated until Vault 101 was at war with itself, and reached its apex when Alphonse Almodovar was murdered.

"No one knows who did it? What about the security cameras?"

He shook his head. "Someone must've cut the cords or something. No one knows anything, not even the other rebels. Whoever did it's keeping real quiet. I don't blame them, especially since Amata's in charge now."

"Amata is Overseer?" It wasn't surprising, really. Everyone had expected her to be next in line. It was just shocking to have it happen so soon. She had to have been the youngest Overseer the vault had ever had.

"Yeah, we voted. Believe it or not, she was on our side. I don't think she wanted her dad to get killed or nothing, though. She was pretty upset about that."

"So what happened after that? I mean, have things settled down? Is everyone okay now?"

Butch looked grim. "Some other people got killed during the fights. A few got hurt."

Lydia didn't ask who. She didn't want to know.

"Other than that, it's all good. Amata's been trying to work stuff out with the holdouts and get them to see things our way. She's putting together a scouting group to come out here and explore and, you know...do egghead stuff."

"Please don't tell me you're in that group. I might begin to seriously doubt her leadership abilities."

"Nah. I'm striking out on my own, like you. I've wanted out of that hole for forever. I'm never going back."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Hell yeah. If you can do it, so can I."

"What about Paul and Wally? They didn't want to come with you?"

He snorted. "Those sissies kept saying they wanted to, but when I actually went to leave they chickened out. I totally kicked them out of the gang."

"So...that leaves just you, then? I don't think that really counts as a 'gang' anymore."

"Shut up, it does too! The Tunnel Snakes will live forever! I just need some more members." He paused. Lydia never would have expected the next thing that came out of his mouth. "Actually, I was thinkin'. We should start up a new gang. And you could be in it, I guess, if you want. The New Tunnel Snakes. It'll be awesome!"

_Huh. _He must have been really desperate if he was turning to her for companionship. Too bad she wouldn't join Butch's _West Side Story_ fantasy if he paid her. "No thanks."

He shrugged. "Well...whatever. I don't want nerds in my gang anyway."

They walked up an old road. Most of the concrete was long gone, giving way to the dirt beneath it. It curved around a rocky hill. She recognized this road. It was the one just outside the entrance to the vault. At the top of the hill was the wooden door that opened to the tunnel to the vault door.

"Do you think she'll want to talk to me?" Lydia said.

Butch shrugged.

She started up the hill. "It'll probably help if I can tell them what it's like out here. It could save lives if they know ahead of time what kind of dangers are waiting."

The flimsy door opened with a creak. It had hardly been used in 200 years, but the wind and dust had taken their toll on it. The tunnel beyond was dark enough that Lydia could barely see. She turned up the display on her Pip-Boy to light the way.

"It's weird, huh?" Lydia said absentmindedly as she looked around at the dirt walls. "To think that 200 years ago, our ancestors marched through this same tunnel while the bombs were falling."

"Uh-huh."

"It must have been scary for them, to have lived outside their whole lives, and then have to climb into a cramped, dark vault. For them it must have been like getting into a giant coffin. Like being buried alive."

"Why do you have to be such a weirdo all the time? Jeez... "

"Well am I wrong? It must have been awful. Never being able to see the sky or the grass again. Think about it."

"Yeah, I don't know, I guess. I don't know why you even think about stuff like that."

"It's relevant. Some of us think about things other than fighting and sex."

"What do you got against fighting and sex?"

"Nevermind."

Lydia knew the outside controls wouldn't work, but she pulled the lever anyway. The camera above the door turned toward her. The lens zoomed in and out as it focused on them. There was fuzzy static as the intercom turned on.

"Back already, Mr. DeLoria? Who's that with you? Amat-The Overseer told you we decided against admitting any non-citizens, didn't she?"

Lydia recognized the voice. "Officer Gomez?" She was glad he was the one watching the security cameras that day. He had been friends with her father before he died. He was also the only security officer who hadn't taken shots at her the day she left.

There was a pause as he tried to place her. "Oh, wow. Is that you, Lydia?"

She smiled at the camera. "It's me."

"Boy it's good to see you, kiddo. We all thought you were long gone. Listen, I can't let you in unless the Overseer okays it. Will you wait there while I get her?"

"Okay." The speaker went off.

It was almost nice to be back: to hear familiar voices, the sound of the intercom going on and off, to be around people who weren't insane. Not that the Vault 101 citizens weren't insane in their own way.

She leaned against the door, resting her hands and face against the cool metal. There was plenty of metal in the Wasteland, but it wasn't like this. This felt like-it _smelled_ like home. It also smelled like oppression and conspiracy and grief and paranoia. She pushed herself away from the door. "I'm glad I'm out of there."

"Yep," Butch replied.

Lydia turned to him. "Why did you leave? You didn't have it so bad."

He took on an uncharacteristically dark, solemn look. "You think you're the only one the Overseer fucked over?"

Static filled the tunnel again. "Lydia! I'm so glad Butch found you. I thought you were dead for sure!"

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Lydia asked, redirecting her attention toward Amata's voice. "I can fend for myself."

"Yeah, as long as I'm there to pull dead Whatevers off of you once in a while," Butch added.

Lydia's face reddened. "Well... I _have_ had some help."

"Then there really are other people still out there?" Amata said. "Some of the older residents were telling me about the previous Overseer, that he opened the vault before we were born... but I can tell you about that later. Hold on, let me open the door."

"Amata, wait. I'm not coming in."

There was more fuzz as she breathed into the microphone. "What are you talking about?"

"I can't stay. I just wanted to tell you what I've learned since I've been out here. You should know as much as possible before you send anyone outside."

"I see. Of course you're leaving again. You just came back to make sure we knew you were alive, so that we'd all know how tough you are, is that it?"

"What?" She'd almost forgotten how hard to deal with Amata was. Almost. "That's not it at all, Amata."

"Do you have any idea how selfish you're being? The Mr. Handy unit has been filling in for you since you left. It's not working out, to say the least. We need a real doctor. We need you."

Lydia looked at the floor. "I'm sorry. I can't. I'll come back to train someone to fill my position when I'm done with this, I promise."

"I'll just tell everyone not to have any accidents until you get back, then. No problem. Hopefully no one else will die while you're away adventuring."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, it's obvious you really care about us. Did you just come to say hello, or do you have any sage advice for us?"

"Just don't let anyone leave yet. I don't have time to tell you everything now, but I will when I come back. Can you just wait until then to send anyone outside?"

"This is ridiculous."

"Please, Amata. People will be killed if you send them out here without help, believe me."

She sighed. "Alright. Is that all?"

"There are also these people who call themselves the Enclave. They've tried to contact you before, I think, and they probably will again. They can't be trusted. Just ignore them; they can't get in if you don't open the door for them."

"Fine. Goodbye, Lydia."

"Um... Amata? I heard about what happened to your dad. I'm sorry."

There was a moment of quiet static, then silence as the intercom was disconnected.

"Boy, she's a real bitch, huh?" Butch said after a moment.

"Wouldn't you be upset if your mom died?"

"But Amata's always like that."

"Not always."

"Most of the time."

Lydia didn't reply. She couldn't really argue with him on that point.

"So where are we going? What's this thing you have to do? Or, wait, did you just make that up to get her off your back?"

" 'Where are _we_ going?' " she repeated.

Butch crossed his arms and set his face defiantly. "I told you I'm not going back into that vault."

He still had his knife in one hand. He hadn't put it away once all day. _I wonder if he's used it yet?_ He didn't have a gun. He would be in trouble if he ran into anything larger than a radroach. And even then, he had his thing with roaches. Both of them stood a better chance of surviving if they stayed together. Enough so that it might even be worth putting up with his company.

"We're going north," Lydia said, and she began to explain to him about the slavers and the collars and Harris and the Enclave.

He seemed a little stunned by the time she'd finished. "Man... this place is nuts... "

"Are you sure you want to come?"

"I already said I do. I'm not scared of anything."

There was a heavy silence. They both knew what the other was thinking.

"Shut up!" Butch said. "I meant...I'm not scared of _mostly_ anything."

"I didn't say anything," Lydia replied with a smile.


	14. Chapter 14

_I've just realized how much I'm referencing movies in this area of the story. I should probably point out that in my mind I picture movies being a main source of entertainment in the Vault, and major source from which the average vault dweller draws their knowledge of what the 'real world' outside 101 is like._

* * *

**Chapter 14**

To his credit, Butch only whined a little bit about all the walking. (Lydia supposed he was better physically prepared for that part of life in the Wasteland than she had been.) He _did_ have a never ending stream of commentary on everything they did or saw, and especially on everything Lydia said.

"So, those Encore guys can track our Pip-Boys? Mine, too?"

"Enclave. Yeah, that's what it sounds like."

"You think they're following us?"

_What, the mighty Tunnel Snake is afraid of fighting someone who's not smaller and weaker than him? _She bit back the remark. "I'm sure they are. I have to figure out how to get my Pip-Boy off. I don't know how else to get them off our trail."

"What do they want us for?"

"I'm not sure. I don't know how they even have access to our GPS signals." Lydia pondered the question. "They say that they're the remains of the government and the military. Maybe they had access to Vault-Tec information, like where they are and who was admitted into them originally. That would explain how they can track us. Come to think of it, when we first met them they said something about me having 'Enclave property'. I didn't think Vault-Tec was federally funded, though."

Butch shrugged. Lydia doubted he knew what 'federal' meant.

"That woman, the scientist who interviewed me, covered up most of what she was writing, but I saw 'Vault Behavioral Project' in her notebook."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think they're doing some kind of sociological research on us. They want to know how much our society has changed after being isolated underground for 200 years."

Butch snorted. "Buncha eggheads."

"Yeah, I think that's what the sergeant thought, too. I don't know. I think it would be an interesting experiment if they were just a little less aggressive about gathering their data."

"You would." He looked about to say something else, then he stiffened. "Hey, did you hear something?"

Lydia listened. She checked her map. There was only one dot, and it was Butch's. "Like what?"

"I dunno. Voices or something. Didn't you hear it?"

"It's just the wind. It makes noises like that sometimes. Just keep an eye on your map."

"Yeah. Okay." He slowly lowered the fist that clenched the handle of his knife. His knuckles were white. The breeze fluttered through the loose fabric of his pants. "Like air vents, huh?"

Lydia nodded. "Nature's air vents."

"Hey, Lyd." He looked at the ground as he spoke. "Does this place ever, you know... I mean, not _now_, but maybe like, when you first came out here... did it ever, you know, freak you out? I mean... " He gestured around vaguely. "It's so... _huge_ out here. And... there's so much _stuff_, like Yao Guys and slavers and... and that." He pointed to her gun. "And there's so much dirt everywhere. Everything's so dirty. Look at my boots!" He held out one foot indignantly. It was grey-brown and dulled with dust. "Pretty soon I'll be as gross as you. No offense."

"Gross?"

"I said no offense."

Lydia blinked at him.

"Look, I'm sure it's not your fault. You've been out here for a while. But you know what I'm saying, right? This place is... weird."

"You don't like it?"

"I don't know about _like_. It's just different, is all I'm saying."

"Yeah," Lydia said. She watched a tiny tornado of dust that had formed nearby. A long dead bush twitched in the light wind. "I like different."

Butch stuttered to a halt and raised his knife defensively again. "There! Do you hear that?" he whispered. He looked at his map at the same time that Lydia raised her wrist and turned a dial to look at hers. Butch's dot stood next to her own location, but fifty yards ahead of them were two more dots. As she listened, she did hear the occasional raised intonation of a voice on the wind.

The other two people were beyond the dropoff of a cliff near them. Butch ran toward them with abandon, waving his toothpick of a knife.

"Wait!" Lydia hissed at him.

"Come on," he said much too loudly. "Let's kick some Wastelander ass!"

She rolled her eyes. If Harris was a character from a cheesy spy movie, Butch was from one of those awful teenage-boy-gang movies. Not that that wasn't already obvious. "Butch," she said just loud enough that he could hear her. "Stop! Just wait, will you? We don't need to fight them. They might not be raiders or slavers, and even if they are, we can just sneak past them."

He slowed long enough to shoot her a disdainful look. "Don't be such a wuss." He leaned over the ledge, wobbling precariously. "Shit," he said, stepping back.

"What?"

"It's really high."

"No kidding." She crawled to the edge on hands and knees and peeked down. Butch knelt beside her, keeping further away from the edge than she. The two people below were speaking to each other, ignoring the vault escapees who spied on them from above. "Be quiet, okay? They don't know we're here yet."

Butch was quiet for a moment, and Lydia could almost see his brain working through his eyes. She could see his excitement, fear, aggression, and annoyance at being told what to do, all battling for dominance. "That's just like you," he said, buying himself time to decide what to do. "Being all quiet and wimpy like a sneaky Chinese... "

She shook her head in exasperation. What could she say to placate him? "No..." she started. "Like a Japanese."

"Whatever. Same thing."

"No, it's different. They have ninja there. You know about ninja?"

He started to shake his head, then stopped. "I think I saw a movie with them once. Are those the guys with the little metal stars?"

"Yeah, that's them. They're not just in movies, they're real people. They're feared by all of Asia for their ability to kill without ever being seen. They're some of the most deadly warriors in the world."

"Yeah?" he asked, trying not to sound too interested.

She nodded. "Under cover of night, a few ninja can take out an entire army. Just by snapping their necks, like this." She made a twisting motion with her hands.

Her imagination was running away with her. She decided to quit while she was ahead. Butch seemed mostly persuaded, anyway. "Snakes are sneaky, too, you know," she added. "They wait quietly until the time is right, then _bam!_"

"You want me to be like a snake?"

"You already are a snake. Have you forgotten already?"

" 'Course not."

"Then...live up to your name. Carry on the Tunnel Snake legacy." She felt ridiculous rambling on about snakes and ninja, but Butch seemed to buy it. He narrowed his eyes down at the people below, clearly channeling his inner snake energy.

At first Lydia thought both of the people were men, but then she saw that one was a tall, flat-chested woman. The metal of the guns in her hands glinted as she paced back and forth around the man. He sat with a posture that demonstrated, without a doubt, that he was not happy about being there. He occasionally shook his head mournfully at the woman's words. She seemed to be doing most of the talking.

"Can you hear what they're saying?" Lydia asked Butch. He shook his head silently. Still being a snake.

The woman waved the guns tauntingly, jutting out a hip and placing her hand on it carelessly. She had won the fight, whatever it was about, and she knew it. Her black hair brushed her neck as she cocked her head. As she turned, half of her face came into view, and Lydia drew in a breath sharply. The woman's narrow eyes were even narrower as she smirked, and her wide mouth nearly cut her face in two.

"Not her," Lydia pleaded.

"Who is it?" Butch asked.

Lydia put her head in her hands. "Shin."

"Who?"

"One of the slavers who attacked Harris and me."

His eyes widened. "Damn. I didn't know there were chick slavers. Well, let's go get her!"

He started up, but Lydia pulled him back down. "Your pocketknife will not fare well against two guns."

"Oh. Yeah. Give me yours, then." He reached for the glowing pistol.

"No." She jerked her hand away from him.

"You want to kill her yourself?"

"No! I don't want to kill anyone."

Shin suddenly turned and cuffed her hostage on the ear. He shrieked and curled into a defensive ball. Shin giggled.

Butch stared at Lydia in confusion. "You're just going to let her do that?"

Usually she would have commented that it was nothing worse than anything he'd done to her. But she was suffering from a bout of deja vu. She remembered saying something similar to Harris not long ago. It disturbed her more than it should have.

Shin kicked the man in the stomach. He doubled over and writhed on the ground. She went to hit him again, and he flinched. She tilted her head playfully side to side as she said something else. The man didn't move as she put her backpack on the ground and pulled something out. A circle of metal...

"Hey, is that one of those collars you told me about?" Butch asked.

Lydia closed her eyes. If she did nothing, that man would probably be a slave for the rest of his life, if he wasn't fatally injured by Shin's mistreatment. _Maybe I could just injure her... No. She's the type to hold a grudge. She'd find me. And if I don't kill her in one shot, she'll have time to shoot at us or that man... _She slowly raised her gun. Her hand trembled.

"You want me to do it?"

"No. You can't shoot." She swallowed. She closed one eye and tried to line up the sight with Shin's head. _She deserves it. _She visualized her time with the woman, and imagined all the people she'd tortured before her and this new victim. She pictured the blood dripping down Harris's face after Shin hit him.

The Chinese woman approached the prone man. She held the collar up in one hand.

"You better do it quick."

"Yes, thanks, you're such a help, Butch." She held the shaking gun firmly in both hands. She traced Shin's movements with the notch at the top of the gun. Her heart raced. She waited for the woman to hold still.

Then something shifted under her hands. A stone came loose and tumbled down the rock face in a shower of dust. Shin pivoted on the spot. She immediately saw them at the top of the ledge and began to raise her gun, but then a splotch of red appeared in her neck. It happened so fast, Lydia hardly remembered firing.

The gun and collar fell from Shin's hands as she choked and clutched at her neck. Blood made a stripe of deep red over her hands and chest. Her eyes were wide as she glared at them. Lydia couldn't have said whether she recognized her or not.

Shin's entire body shook violently as she fell to her knees, then onto her side. She continued to shiver there for a minute or so as she bled out. Lydia couldn't look away. She twitched a few times, with a sort of grave finality, before she became completely still.

The man on the ground looked back and forth between Shin and Lydia in awe. Their eyes met briefly before he leapt up and staggered away.

The gun fell from Lydia's hands. She leaned forward and let her head drop to the ground, and she cried.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

It was a few long hours later when they came across an old outpost. The road was washed away in all but a few spots, but a gas station and motel still remained partly intact. They inspected both buildings, and Lydia judged the motel safe to sleep in despite the sagging ceiling.

Inside the door was a rectangular room. On the right side was an alcove with a matched set of maroon couches, covered in a thick layer of dust. No one had been there in a while. Across from the door was a counter with a cash register and a refrigerator behind it.

"I'm hungry." Butch said, looking wistfully at the refrigerator. He had been remarkably quiet since the incident with Shin. Even he knew when to shut up once in a while. Now his stomach was growling. He suddenly gave Lydia a concerned look. "Hey, where are you supposed to get food out here?"

Of course he hadn't brought anything with him from the vault. "Check the fridge."

"No one's been here in, like, a million years," he said as he made his way past the counter. "You really think there will be something-" He opened the door, revealing shelves of food and drinks. The light didn't come on. "Huh. How come it's not all rotten?" He pulled a Nuka Cola out of the door and twisted the cap off.

"It was probably preserved by radiation. Which is bad for you."

He paused, the bottle hovering in front of his lips. "How bad for you?"

"Not very, apparently," she muttered. _Seeing as I still haven't kicked the bucket._

Butch shrugged and drank half the bottle at once. "Tastes weird." He turned to the open fridge and scanned the shelves.

There was a hallway on the left side of the room. It was lined with doors, each labeled with numbers carved on little brass plates: 113, 111, 109... Lydia left footprints in the dust and dirt on the carpet as she passed them. She stopped in front of the last door. 101. She smiled faintly and pushed the door open. It was a small, sparse room with an even smaller window high up on the opposite wall, which provided dim light. The only furnishings were a compact bed on one side and a desk on the other. _It's hardly more than a prison cell by pre-war standards. Perfect, considering the room number._

As she closed the door behind her, she discovered another door leading to a tiny bathroom. There was no electricity, but the plumbing still worked (although the water that came out of the faucet was opaque). She splashed some on her face, dislodging a layer of grime. A mirror hung above the sink, but it was so caked with dirt that all she could see of herself was a human-shaped blur. Her attempt to scrape it away did little more than smear it around.

Wiping her face on her sleeve, she returned to the main room and flopped onto the bed, releasing a cloud of dust. She watched the ghostly particles floating in the slant of moonlight coming through the window. She waved a hand through them, and they scattered and swirled like soil in water.

There was a noise in the hall. Lydia looked up. Butch was standing in the doorway. "Don't you want something to eat?" he asked through a mouthful of food.

She shook her head.

"You haven't eaten all day."

"I'm not hungry."

"Suit yourself." He swaggered over to the wall across from her and slid down it. He held up a bottle he'd found, some type of liquor. _Great._ He opened the top and sniffed at it.

"Please put that away."

He ignored her. "What do you want to bet I could drink the whole thing?"

"As your doctor, I have to strongly advise that you don't."

"Why?"

"You'll die."

"I won't die," he said, though he didn't sound too sure. He took a sip. He didn't seem phased by the taste. He'd probably drank plenty before; he definitely wouldn't have had a hard time getting ahold of it with how much his mother kept around. When Lydia went to their apartment to deal with the radroach infestation, she'd had to step over at least five bottles to get inside. Maybe, if luck was with her, he'd built up a tolerance to it.

Lydia had never tried it before. She'd never had the chance back in the vault, but now... It's not like she could get in trouble. And just a little bit wouldn't hurt. She held out her hand. "Let me have some."

Butch grinned and handed her the bottle. It was whiskey, according to the well-preserved label. She held it up to the light and examined the contents. Amber liquid sloshed against the foggy glass.

"Just take a drink, already," Butch said. Lydia held the bottle up to her mouth tentatively. Slowly, she tipped it back and swallowed a mouthful.

She covered her mouth to keep from spitting it back out. Her tongue felt like it wanted to crawl away. She cringed as she swallowed the rest of it and handed it back to him.

Butch snorted. "You're such a retard."

"That is the most awful thing I've ever tasted."

"You get used to it."

_Why would you _want_ to get used to it?_ "What's it feel like when you get drunk?" she wondered.

He gave her an amazed look. "My ears must be plugged or something. I thought I just heard you admit that you don't know everything."

She frowned at him. "No one knows everything, but you can only get closer by asking questions."

"Whatever." He took another swig. "It's like... at first you get kind of light-headed and dizzy. Then your eyes get messed up, and it's hard to focus and stuff. And it gets hard to walk and, like, move, you know?"

"I don't get what's supposed to be so great about that. It sounds terrible."

"It's just fun. Some people just start laughing a lot and hugging everybody and stuff. Some people get mad." He smiled. "I'm kind of both. When I'm really wasted, I always want to go punch someone."

"Yeah, I know." She unconsciously held her side protectively, where someone had kicked her once. She didn't remember whether it was Butch or Wally who did it (Paul wasn't really the kicking type). The bruise lingered for two months.

He stopped smiling. "Yeah..." He suddenly began picking at the carpet very intently. "Look, I...hope we didn't hurt you too bad or anything."

Lydia stared at him, dumbstruck. "You do?"

He shrugged. He spoke unusually quietly. "I wasn't trying to, that much. I mean, sometimes you just get kind of carried away, you know? And...sometimes after we fought, I thought maybe...I just hoped you were okay."

_Did he just apologize? _When she didn't respond, he looked up at her questioningly. There was no trace of his trademark smirk.

"Oh. Well...thanks."

There was an awkward silence. Butch took another sip of his drink. "I told the guys that maybe we should go easy on you and Amata, since you're chicks and all. I mean, you shouldn't really hit girls, I guess. Paul thought so, too, but Wally didn't go for it. He really hated Amata's guts."

"It has nothing to do with gender," Lydia said. "You shouldn't hurt anyone."

Butch raised his eyebrows. "You hurt that lady today."

"Yeah." Lydia flopped backward onto the bed again. The mention of Shin gave her that butterfly feeling in her stomach. If said butterflies were carnivores eating their way out through her skin, that is. _I have nothing to feel bad about. By killing that one person, I saved countless other innocent people. _She closed her eyes, and the dying slaver popped into view in her mind's eye. Her death kept playing over and over like a repeating film. She quickly opened her eyes again and stared at the water stains on the ceiling. Irregular brown circles fading to white in the center. Faint drips down the wall behind her. Like blood.

_Harris would have killed her. And I'll bet he wouldn't be enough of an idiot to feel guilty about it. _

"I think you did the right thing," Butch said.

"Could you have done it, if I gave you the gun?"

"Sure."

She was shaking her head when she heard a small noise beneath the bed, like paper rustling. She leaned over the back end of the bed and lifted the dust ruffle. In the dim light she could make out a crinkled newspaper and...something else. She bent down farther and held her Pip-Boy down to light the space.

Something darted away from her, out the other side of the bed toward Butch. He shrieked, jumped about a foot in the air and leapt onto the bed. "Fuck! What was that shithead bug doing there?" The insect ran out the door and disappeared into the dark.

Lydia didn't try very hard to conceal her smile. "It probably lives there."

"God..." He looked around the room wildly, searching for others. "Fucking roaches." He hurried to the door and slammed it shut. His bottle was lying on the bed. A quarter of it had been flung onto Lydia's clothes and the sheets.

"Thanks a lot," she said.

"It's that friggin bug's fault," Butch said, snatching up the bottle. He settled onto the bed again and took a large drink. "Did you see where it went?"

"The hallway."

"Yeah, but...it probably went into one of the other rooms."

"So?"

"...Can I sleep in here tonight?"

"You are not sleeping with me, Butch."

"I don't want to, egghead, don't flatter yourself. Just go into another room and let me have this one. Please?"

She blinked at him.

"I can't sleep if I think it might be in the room with me," he whispered.

"Oh, alright," she said with mock reluctance. She slid off the bed and went to the door. "Goodnight."

"Yeah, see you tomorrow." He sat back against the headboard, looking around the room suspiciously.

The room next door was nearly identical to the other. She closed the door and sat on the bed. It felt exactly the same as the other one. It was a hard mattress, but still a lot softer than the ground. It was nice. She didn't bother to get under the covers. Too hot for that. She curled on her side and drifted to sleep.

A while later, something woke her up. She pried her eyes open. It was still dark out. Someone was making noise behind her. Laughing. She flipped over. "What the hell, Butch?"

He was standing next to her bed, leaning one arm against the wall. "Ohhh, good. You're awake. Heh." He slurred something unintelligible.

"What?" She shook her head. "Go back to bed."

He slumped to the floor and rested his elbows on the edge of the bed. "I'm bored..." He laughed.

"I told you to put the alcohol away."

"You're not the boss of me! Stop ordering me around all the time!"

Lydia drew back when he yelled. _I always want to go punch someone... _

"You're always acting so super...sup...spear..." He trailed off. "It's okay. We're friends now." He gave her a sloppy grin. "C'mere." He climbed on the bed and threw an arm around her.

And suddenly she was back in Megaton. The sharp smell of alcohol coming off of him, the heaviness of him leaning over her and his arm tightening around her back. She was trapped.

She lashed out wildly. "Get off! Don't touch me!" she screamed. She pounded her fists against his chest until he drew back. He pulled his arm away to block her blows.

"Okay, jeez! What'ssyour problem?" He stood unsteadily, glaring at her. "Why don't _you_ go to bed," he said. He kicked the wall, then went out into the hall again. He went left and disappeared from view, then reappeared going the other direction when he remembered his room was to the right.

Lydia closed the door and locked it behind him. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. _Well, that was nothing short of a huge overreaction._ Hopefully he wouldn't remember this tomorrow.

Lydia awoke to early grey sunlight streaming through the window. She got up immediately. Her legs felt like lead. She ignored the sensation. She had to go wake up Butch._ I hope he doesn't throw up on me. _

"Butch?" Lydia said. He was sprawled on the bed with the sheets curled around him in a ball. Some of them were falling off the side of the mattress. His head was stuffed under the pillow.

"Butch." He didn't move.

In proper light, she could see the room more clearly. It looked odd, transformed. As she looked around, she realized that her room and this one weren't exactly the same.

Last night she hadn't seen the full length mirror sitting on a stand in the corner. It looked slightly clearer than the mirror in the bathroom-the surface was tilted down, so dust and dirt hadn't gathered on it as much. She turned it upward and scrubbed at the surface with her fingernails. Slowly the dirt flaked off. She scraped off a space large enough that she could see her face, then moved in front of it.

She didn't recognize the face in the mirror. Her features seemed sharper. There was a large, yellow bruise on her temple and the white line of a scar on her forehead. Her cheeks and nose were scarlet with sunburn. Her skin had darkened a shade or two and she had even more freckles than before, if that was possible. Her red hair was so filthy it looked brown, and it was sticking up at an odd angle on one side. She patted it down, and was unnerved to see the reflection move, as though she hadn't quite believed it was herself until then.

There was a spot of dry skin along her hairline. No wonder it kept itching. She poked at it, and a small piece flaked off. She moved her head side to side, and another line of irregular skin caught her eye. A circle around her neck, where the collar had been, was raw in some places and dry and flaking in others. She tugged at the neckline of her shirt to look at her collarbones. They had always been prominent, but they seemed even moreso now. The flesh over them looked drawn and thin. She leaned closer to the mirror. There was a cut over the outer edge of her left clavicle. She hadn't been cut there. The skin was simply splitting on its own.

She'd soaked up over a thousand rads almost a month ago. It hadn't killed her. There was only one explanation, but she hadn't seen it until now.

She was becoming a ghoul.

"I am such an idiot."

"_Duh..._"

She watched the reflection of the shape under the mass of sheets. Butch moved around until his head poked out from under the pillows. He blinked at her sleepily. "I told you you look like crap."

Lydia turned around. He looked at her blankly. If he remembered last night, he didn't show it. "It's time to go," Lydia said.

He rolled over and tucked his head under the comforter. "No."

"We have to hurry. If you don't get up, I'll leave without you."

He threw the comforter off in annoyance and squinted in the light. "It's like four AM," he groaned.

"It's 5:40."

He fairly rolled out of the bed. His hair was squashed into a weird shape. The pouf on top of his head had slid to the side and formed a point.

"Your hair looks nice," Lydia said.

He rubbed his eyes. "Just let me go to the bathroom before we go."

Lydia drummed her fingers against the wall as she waited for him. "Hurry up," she said after a few minutes.

"I'm coming. Jeez." The door opened and he emerged, looking slightly more awake than before. His ducktail was perfect.

"You were doing your hair?"

"Yeah."

Lydia gave him a reproachful look.

"What?"

"That's the last time I make fun of your looks. I had no idea you were so sensitive."

"I'm not sensitive."

Lydia smirked at him. "Yeah, okay."


	16. Chapter 16

_Little did you know, I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane-I mean...bombs._

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 16**

"How much farther is this going to be?"

"I don't know. Hopefully not very. I think we're catching up to them." They followed Lydia's compass north all day and it was long since night again. The fact that they had run across Shin gave her hope that they were going in the right direction.

" 'Hopefully'..." Butch muttered. He seemed to have exhausted his supply of conversation topics. He had already commented on nearly every aspect of the Wasteland that was different than the vault, and he'd told her what he thought about every citizen of Vault 101, including her. "Well let's stop soon. I'm sick of this."

"Let's get to the top of that ridge first. Seems more defensible than down here in the open, don't you think?"

"Does it matter? I haven't seen anything alive all day."

She checked her map again, as she did periodically to make sure they were still on track. There were still no heat signatures. She didn't think there would be. It wasn't that she was afraid they'd be attacked if they stayed below (though that was always a possibility). It was that stopping would mean admitting that they'd passed yet another day without finding Harris and Andy. Each day it seemed that the likelihood of finding them was less and less. Lydia was beginning to fear they wouldn't make it in time. There was no way she'd be able to get Harris out of Paradise Falls once he was there. Even the two of them were no match for the entire base of operations for slavers in the capitol.

The only way up the hill was a steep incline covered in loose gravel and dirt. If there was ever a path, it had eroded away. They elected to climb straight up.

Andy woke up first. Someone was making an awful lot of noise on that hill. Evidently they hadn't found the path going up the side, away from the loose debris in front.

He climbed up the rock face next to the small plateau, stopping in a small cave-like depression. From there he could see the hill and the part of the plateau beyond the boulder that he and the ghoul were camped behind. The moon was on the opposite side of the hill, which meant that the slope he was looking at was in shadow. He could barely see the two figures on the hill and the dry waterfalls of earth falling under their footsteps.

He dropped back down to the lower level. The ghoul had awoken silently and was standing there, looking at him expectantly.

"There are two people," Andy said in a low voice. "I can't tell if they're raiders or not, but they're coming this way. They're moving slowly, but they will be here in a few minutes. I'm going up there so I have a clear shot. Why don't you stay here. If they look hostile, I'll start shooting. If they aren't, I'll signal you and you can talk to them."

"How about you talk to them, and I shoot?"

Andy smiled. "I don't think so. Just tell them this spot's taken."

"Fine."

They had been functioning like this for a while now, fighting off predators large and small. It was working so far. Andy liked to think that he'd gained at least a small amount of his trust, but that wasn't saying much. "I know you don't like taking orders," he said. "I'm sorry about that, but you can understand my situation. I really can't trust you with a gun, given-"

The ghoul pointedly walked off and took his position behind the boulder. Andy frowned. He really was quite rude.

"Ow!"

A rock slid out from under Lydia's feet and bounced down the hill, hitting Butch in the shoulder.

"Sorry. Move to the side so you aren't right under me."

"You move."

She rolled her eyes and shifted to the right. They were almost to the top.

"You just _had_ to climb up the hill," Butch said. "We could be asleep right now."

"Shut up." She pulled herself to the top of the hill where the slope finally ended, then turned and reached out a hand to help him up the rest of the way.

Andy watched as the figures mounted the plateau. One held out a hand, then leaned back to pull the other up into the light. He didn't look like a raider. Much too clean, for one thing. He might have just walked out of a the bulky object around his left forearm caught Andy's attention. _He _did_ just walk out of a vault._

The short figure turned around, then, and the moonlight shone on a face he recognized. It was that vault girl. Not only was she alive, but she had escaped the Enclave and followed them all the way here? Maybe she deserved more credit than he'd given her.

Andy bit his lip. Her being there was not good. She'd be looking for a fight (and evidently she _could_ fight since she'd gotten all the way here). If she got to the ghoul, they would definitely gang up on him. He wouldn't have worried, but she had a gun now.

The ghoul was watching him for a signal. Andy raised the assault rifle he'd taken from him. The girl had the gun, but her companion looked like a more formidable opponent. He waffled for a moment, then trained the weapon on the larger figure.

"Now can we sleep? If you say anything other than 'Sure, Butch, great idea!', I'm leaving right now, I swear."

Lydia ignored him as she surveyed the area. There was an outcropping of rock on the right, a boulder directly in front of them with a path leading behind it, and a taller outcropping on-

She did a double take. On the left, halfway up the earthen spire was a large gun pointing at them from behind a short rock wall.

"Look out!" She dove to the ground and tried to pull Butch with her, but it was too late. Three shots rang out, and he was flung to the ground. He yelled in pain. The sound meant that he was still alive, at least. Lydia leapt forward and put her back to the boulder. She was about to lean out to check the position of their assailant when someone else darted out from the other side. A strong hand wrapped around her wrist and jerked her forward, flipping her to the ground. She brought up her gun, but the man took hold of that arm as well, so tight that it hurt.

Then, at the same time, they saw each other in the light. They both stopped struggling and stared at each other in incomprehension.

"That son of a bitch." Harris said.

"Andy."

"Yes," he said through gritted teeth.

Lydia winced. "Please let go," she reminded him. He quickly released her. She could hear Andy climbing down from his perch. She pushed the gun into Harris's hands. "Here. It's all I have."

He took it. "Come on." He pushed her to the left, where they could presumably circle around and get cover behind Andy.

"Wait," Lydia said. She turned toward where Butch had fallen, only to see him run past her and down the path beyond the boulder. _That idiot, he's going to get himself killed._ He and his stupid switchblade...

A series of sounds came in quick succession. A few shots fired, a yell, a gasp, and then the sound of someone collapsing. It was all too familiar. Lydia and Harris waited for an indication that someone still lived.

"Uugh...god, this fucking hurts," Butch moaned.

Lydia stuck her head around the corner. Butch was hunched over on his knees, holding himself tightly, rocking back and forth. Andy was huddled against the back side of the boulder with Harris's assault rifle discarded near him. His hands were clamped over his neck. Judging by the amount of blood leaking through, Butch had made a rather large slice over his jugular vein. He looked at Lydia with eyes wide with terror. It was the look of someone who could feel their death upon them. It was eerie. This was not the man who had enslaved them.

At this rate, Andy would bleed out in minutes. His pack was a few feet away from him. His eyes fell on it, and he reached out for it with one arm. Blood gushed out when he removed his hand, and he quickly readjusted to cover as much of the laceration as he could. He shook nearly uncontrollably when he moved.

Harris aimed the pistol at him, and Andy froze, looking like a deer in the headlights. Then, understanding, he sat back and brought his arm back to his neck. He opened his mouth as though to say something, but only a gurgling sound came out. Harris lowered the pistol.

"He was just getting a stimpak," Lydia said.

"I know," Harris replied.

Andy watched in horror as blood dripped down over his clothes. He lifted his gaze to them fearfully, imploringly. He tried to speak again, letting out a harsh choking noise. Lydia looked down. It didn't matter what he had done to them. Seeing anyone like this made her feel ill.

She knew she had done the right thing when she killed Shin. She thought that killing Andy was probably the right thing, too. But she didn't know if she could handle watching him die, or live with the memory of it afterward. This was even worse than Shin and the raider. She knew that if she let Andy die like this, she would never be able to get it out of her head: the blood, the choking, the panicky shaking of his limbs as he tried to save his own life.

So she made her decision. She went quickly to the pack and dug for a stimpak.

"What are you doing?" Harris said.

Andy shot him a nervous glance, but Lydia ignored him. She took away his spare pistol and shoved it in her pocket. She located a stim in a small compartment on the side of the backpack. She held it up to him, and he slowly lowered his hands from the wound, as though he couldn't believe she was really going to use it on him. They both flinched at the sudden surge of blood. It was a long, deep cut. Lydia stuck the stimpak directly into it and pushed the plunger.

Andy lifted his fingers to where the cut had been to check the healing. The pain on his face was gone, replaced with utter confusion.

"What the hell'd you do that for?" Butch said with a groan. "That asshole just tried to kill me."

Lydia got another stimpak out of the pocket and took it to him.

"Thanks a lot. Help the guy who's shooting us, _then_ me." He watched Andy warily.

"You weren't dying."

"I think I am."

"Never met a dying man who was so talkative."

"Ughh. Just hurry up and stim me."

"Take your jacket off."

"I can't. You do it."

He was very stiff as she pulled it off. His pupils were huge and his eyes darted around much quicker than they should have. The residual effects of VATS. It must have activated when he was shot and given him just enough speed to hit Andy before he could shoot. Lydia saw, as she slid the jacket and suit off his shoulder, that there were two very large holes in his shoulder.

"Oh, Butch, this is bad..."

"I know it is, you don't need to tell me!"

She checked his back. Two holes there, as well. The bullets had gone all the way through. She stuck the needle in, and Butch sighed in relief.

"Does it feel okay?" she asked.

He nodded. He looked past her at where Andy was, and a look of disbelief crossed his face. His jaw fell...and fell...and fell... "What...what...?"

Lydia looked behind her. While she'd been tending to Butch, Harris had picked up his rifle, reloaded it, and slung it over his shoulder. He was leaning against the rock next to Andy.

"Oh...I forgot to tell you." Lydia said sheepishly. "Don't freak out. That's Harris."

Butch stared. Lydia gave Harris an apologetic look, but he didn't seem phased by Butch's reaction.

"Butch?" Lydia said.

No reply.

"I've finally managed to render you speechless. Amata will never believe it."

Finally he tore his gaze away to look at Lydia, first turning his head, then his eyes. "Lyd...didn't you see that movie, _Night of the Living Dead_?"

She rolled her eyes. "This isn't a movie. Don't worry about it." He looked unconvinced.

Harris interrupted the exchange. "That was a waste of a stimpak."

"Hey!"

"He's not talking about you, Butch."

The ghoul watched as Andy squirmed, still grasping his neck as though his head might fall off any second. "What do you suggest we do with him now, angel of mercy?"

"I don't know," she said weakly. She hadn't thought that far ahead.

"I still think we should just kill him," Butch said.

"I agree," Harris said.

"No," Lydia objected. "That's not necessary."

"What did you come here for, if not to kill him?" Harris asked.

Lydia blinked. "I came to get you."

"Lydia, I still have to go to Paradise Falls."

"No," she said, getting to her feet. "I'll get your collar off."

That got his attention. He turned away from Andy. "What?"

"An Enclave scientist took mine off. I watched her. I think I know how it works."

He raised his eyebrows. "You 'think'?"

"I can do it," she said resolutely.

"She probably can," Butch interjected carefully, still giving Harris a disbelieving look. "She's a real egghead."

Harris paused, considering. "Do it, then." He sat down so she could reach the collar easily. Lydia cast a careful glance at Andy. He was still sitting there in a huddle, looking conflicted. It didn't look like he was going to try anything. Lydia went and knelt next to Harris.

"Oh." When she saw the screws, she realized she didn't have anything to take them out with. "Butch, do you have a pocketknife? Not that one," she specified when he began to hold out his switchblade. "One of those ones with a bunch of stuff on it. Like a Swiss Army knife."

He shook his head.

Harris didn't have anything, she knew, because Shin and Andy had taken everything from them. She looked to Andy. His eyes widened and he quickly groped around in his pockets. He produced a penknife and tossed it to her. It was a simple one with a small blade, a file, and a tiny pair of scissors. Good enough.

"Stay still," Lydia said (as though she needed to tell him). She raised the knife to his collar, but he held up an arm to stop her. He looked her in the eyes.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

She nodded once.

"Lydia. If it explodes, it will kill you, too."

She swallowed. "Good thing it's not going to explode, then."

Harris lowered his arm and held perfectly still.

Taking a deep breath, Lydia held the spring-loaded door in place tightly as she used the blade to twist out the screws one by one. When they were all out, she took out the bobby pin she'd picked her handcuffs with. She cracked the door open and peered through the crack, looking for the lever that would trigger the bomb if it was released. She saw only blackness. She was going to close the door so she could turn up the brightness on her Pip-Boy, but then she wondered if shutting it would also somehow trigger the explosion. Instead, she held it steady. "Butch, can you come hold your Pip-Boy right here? I can't see."

"Yeah, come over here next to the zombie with a bomb around his neck..." he muttered, but he turned up the screen's brightness and held it as close as he dared-a few feet away.

Lydia still didn't see the lever. She edge the door open a tiny bit more. She looked at it from every angle, but she couldn't see it. She let the panel up a little more, sure that it would go off any second. But then, there it was. It was halfway down the length of the panel, partly released already and pressed up against the door. She held her breath. How much farther did it have to go before it would trigger the bomb?

Moving as little as possible, she rested her wrist on Harris's shoulder for balance and slid the thin end of the bobby pin through the door. She pushed it gently over the lever and depressed it back down. "Almost done," she said. She opened the door all the way, careful not to move the pin. There was a space with several wires going across it, each a different color. In her collar, the red and yellow wires had been cut.

One handed, she flipped the scissors out of the knife. She had to reach awkwardly over her other hand to reach the wires, and it was difficult to keep her other hand completely still. She was torn between going slow and carefully or just cutting the wires quickly before the lever slipped. She picked the wires apart with the ends of the scissors until she got a grip on the red one. She shifted her grip to cut it, then paused. She swore.

"What?" Butch asked.

Lydia swore again. "There are two wires I need to cut, a red one and a yellow one. One disarms the bomb and the other opens the collar, but I don't know which is which."

"So? Cut both of them."

"If I open it before I disconnect the bomb, it'll go off. Goddamn it," she said miserably. She thought of when Carmen was removing her own collar. There were two snips. Which one was first? The wires were all horizontal and parallel. The yellow one was on top, the red was on the bottom. Had her hand moved up or down? Up or down? Down, she thought. Or maybe...was she thinking of some movement she'd made before clipping the wires? No, she was sure she had cut the upper one first and gone down.

She moved the scissors away from the red wire and onto the yellow one. She was _pretty_ sure she had moved downward. But then, the red wire was going toward the lower edge of the block, where the detonator seemed to be housed. But it could be that they twisted around inside the part of the block that she couldn't see, and the red one actually went up? Maybe they were only positioned this way on the outside to confuse people who were trying to get them off. No, surely they wouldn't have gone that far...

And what if there were different types of collars? Maybe this one and the one she had weren't even the same model, and on this one you were supposed to cut the blue and green wires. They looked the same, as far as she could remember, but...

She shook her head and swore again. She moved the scissors back up to the yellow wire.

"Cut the red one first."

Lydia stopped halfway through pinching the scissors shut. She couldn't turn backward to look at Andy's face, but his voice sounded honest. _Probably just wishful thinking. _

"Cut the yellow one," Harris said quietly, trying not to move.

"But he probably knew you'd say that," she whispered back. "Maybe it really is the red one."

"Hmm. Cut the red one, then."

"Or...maybe he anticipated that we'd figure that out, and it's actually the yellow one."

Harris sighed.

The light shifted as Butch turned to Andy. "You know, you're dead, too, if they blow up," he said. "Right now the bleeding heart over here is the only reason you're still alive."

"Cut the red one," Andy said again.

Lydia took a breath and moved the scissors to the red wire. She closed her eyes, and cut.

Nothing happened. She opened her eyes. The collar was intact and the red light on the outside of the block had gone off. She cut the other wire. The collar clicked open, and she pulled it off. She grinned. Harris looked at the chunk of metal in her hands, and smiled back at her.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

The moment of quiet celebration was short-lived.

"I still want to kill him," Butch said.

"I still agree," Harris said, his smile gone as quickly as it had appeared.

"I told you the right one!" Andy exclaimed.

"In your own interests," Harris replied.

"We don't have to kill him," Lydia argued. "Just let him leave and we'll never have to see him again."

"That sounds excellent," Andy said.

"Be quiet," Harris said. "You don't get a say in this." He turned to Lydia and spoke more softly. "If we let him go, he'll just do to someone else what he did to us. I know it's...difficult for you. But we don't have prisons. Sometimes execution is the best way to deal with people like him."

Lydia was quiet for a moment. This wasn't like him. "Maybe," she admitted. "But I bet your reasons aren't completely altruistic."

He drew his rifle. "No. Not completely."

Lydia stood in front of him and put her hand on the gun's barrel. "Please don't."

He looked down at her. "Why do you care about this so much?"

She looked at her feet. "I killed the other one," she blurted.

"...The woman?"

She nodded. She whispered, "I shot her. Harris, it makes me feel sick. How can you stand it?"

He didn't answer. "He's very charismatic, but he's no better than she was," he assured her. "Don't get upset about it." He moved past her.

"Wait, wait," Andy stuttered as he came closer. Harris raised the gun next to his head. Andy put his hands up in front of him. "Wait, listen! You need me. I'll help you fight the Enclave."

"The Enclave?"

Andy nodded as he stared into the barrel in his face. "Yes. They found her once, they'll find her again, right? There were at least four of them. You can't take them all on with just the three of you."

"Uh, speaking of which..." Butch was returning from the other side of the boulder. He looked antsy as he pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "There are some people down there. People with some big armor and glowy guns." Lydia's stomach dropped. Harris went to the other side to check, much to Andy's visible relief.

"Is it them?" Lydia asked tentatively when he returned.

"It's them," he said. Andy looked hopeful.

"Can't we just run?" Lydia said.

"We could, but they'd find you again. We have to face them sometime. It might as well be now." He gave Andy a cold look. "You'd better give that bastard his gun back." Lydia nodded her agreement.

Andy smiled as she came over. "Thanks for that," he said quietly. "That man really despises me."

Lydia gave him a distasteful look as she held out his gun, grip first. "Just because I don't want to kill you doesn't mean I like you."

"I suppose that's the best I'm going to get." He took the gun from her and stood up slowly. For a second his eyes glazed and he looked like he was going to fall over. He braced himself against the rock wall.

"You lost a lot of blood. Can you still fight?" Lydia asked.

He nodded. "I'm fine."

Lydia turned to Harris. "So, what should we do?"

He was looking over their surroundings. "You get behind that rock back there." He looked at Butch. "Can you shoot?"

"Yeah, totally."

"You've never shot a gun in your life," Lydia said impatiently.

"Well, whatever, it's not like it's that hard."

Harris dug through the backpack and pulled out a stimpak-the last one-and another pistol, then shoved the pack into a corner under the edge of the boulder. He gave Butch a short rundown of the gun and the way it worked. "Get up there and take cover in that outcropping. Stay there and no one will be able to get to you without going around there and getting really close. They should be easy targets." He turned to Andy, and hesitated.

Andy smiled weakly. "Come on, I'm not going to turn on you now. Then I'd have to fight you _and_ those Enclave lackeys. You have to either trust me or don't, or this is never going to work."

"You get up there." He looked to where Andy had been shooting from before. "I'll stay behind here on the front line. You three cover me. Try to get as many shots in as you can before they get to me, and I'll finish them when they come around the corner. Aim for the joints in their armor-the inside of the elbows and knees, hips, neck. Their eyes and breathing masks, too. And try not to hit me. I've only got one stimpak."

There came the tramping of armored feet. "They're coming up the path on the side," Harris continued quietly. "They know we're here, but they won't know exactly where we're all positioned, so we have an advantage. Don't waste it."

He backed against the boulder and readied his rifle. Butch clambered up to his post. It was an awkward process due to the fact that he'd never climbed rocks before. Andy climbed slowly to his perch, leaving red marks behind him where his bloody clothing dragged over the stone. Lydia went back to the small stone at the edge of the plateau. She crouched behind it and set her arms on top of it to balance her gun. She wondered suddenly how many shots she had left. _Too late to get more ammo now._ The footsteps were getting closer. She could tell they were trying to be quiet. They weren't going to get a warning this time.

"Harris," she whispered. He looked back at her, but she found she didn't know what she to say.

Then a shot went off. The soldiers were shooting. Someone on her right fired back. Andy. She glanced up to see him huddled behind his rock, barely poking his head and his pistol over the top. He fired twice more and there was a loud metallic noise. He ducked as a green light streaked over his head and melted a small hole in the cliffside above him. Harris looked around the corner, but the soldiers must still have been out of sight or range, and he ducked back behind the rock.

An echoey voice was yelling something, and Lydia saw four armored figures run past the path between the boulder and Butch's perch. Now they were under Andy, too close for him to get a good shot at them, but they were in Butch's range. More shots came from the left, though there were no metallic sounds of bullets hitting armor. Someone fired back at Butch several times and he ducked. All three shots hit the wall behind him. That filtered voice was shouting orders.

Someone appeared, edging around the boulder that Harris was behind. The soldier kept his back to the wall and his gun on Butch's position. Lydia lined up her shot and fired. The green light grazed his helmet, and he turned to her. She sank below her rock, but before the soldier could fire, Lydia heard Harris's gun and the sound of bullets tearing through metal. Something crashed to the ground. _One down._

The cacophony of everyone shooting at once was deafening. It was impossible to tell exactly what was happening. The only person she could see from behind her cover was Andy, who was firing relentlessly at someone below (hopefully not Harris). She peered over the rock and twisted to see more. Butch was cowering behind his rock. One or two of them seemed to be focusing on him and he couldn't get out of cover for long enough to return fire. Several of the soldiers moved into view on the path. One was shooting at Butch, the other was turned toward her. She shot at them (and missed), before dodging another green streak. Harris fired again, and there was a shout and another crash.

There were a few more shots, then nothing. After a few quick, lurching footsteps, suddenly Harris was crouched beside her, leaning against the rock. He was still for a moment, listening.

"How many dead?" Lydia asked softly.

"Two," he said tightly. He was holding himself oddly, and hardly breathing. He reached into a pocket with one hand and took out the stimpak. Then Lydia saw the hole in his stomach.

"They hit you."

"Yes." He jammed the stimpak into the wound and it shrank most of the way closed.

"They're circling around there," Andy called, pointing toward them.

The remaining soldiers rounded the corner behind them. Harris immediately fired on them, shooting the rifle out of the first one's hands. It fell to the ground, broken nearly in half. The soldiers quickly retreated back behind the rock wall.

Harris slid around to the other side of their rock, and Lydia followed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Andy stand up to get a better angle, then sway slightly before fainting. Harris swore quietly. Lydia heard metallic voices, then heavy footsteps. They were getting close, relying on their thick armor to protect them long enough to kill their unprotected prey. Now that Andy was passed out and Butch was on the other side of a rock formation, they had no crossfire to worry about.

"Stay behind me," Harris said. "Shoot over my shoulder."

Lydia nodded and raised her gun with trembling hands. _They're going to kill him. They're going to kill me. _The footsteps stopped just on the other side of the rock. Harris braced his rifle against his shoulder.

"Sergeant..." one of the soldiers murmured. It was perfectly audible in the quiet. The other one-it must have been Hale-shushed him loudly. There was a pause that seemed to extend forever as each group waited for the other to act. Lydia could have sworn it was VATS kicking in, but she felt no pinprick. Her gun felt about to slip out of her hands.

Then one of the soldiers leapt around the rock, and a metal-encased fist collided with her head at the same time that she fired. Her head bounced against the wall behind her. She spun to the ground as Harris shot a line of rounds into the soldier's face.

"Kline!" the woman screamed as he fired. She fell back and lay motionless.

Harris turned to face the other soldier. He spotted him looking out from above the rock. The man dropped out of sight just as Harris fired. The bullets skimmed his helmet, but didn't penetrate it.

"Hey," the soldier said loudly from behind the rock, his voice amplified by his helmet. "Don't shoot."

"Like hell," Harris muttered. He kept his rifle aimed between both edges of the rock, ready to shoot in either direction. He glanced down at the girl on the ground. She was sprawled in an unnatural position, but she was breathing. He refocused on the soldier. It was a bad position, but he couldn't move with Lydia stuck there. He didn't know if they still wanted her alive or not, and he wasn't willing to take a chance on it. Where was that other vault kid?

"Listen. My orders were to shoot you from above while she went around the other side and incapacitated the girl," the soldier said. "But I didn't, and that's the only reason you're still alive. I don't want to fight you."

There was a pause. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction or a reply from Harris, but he gave none.

"I'm coming out," the soldier said. "I have a plasma pistol in my right hand, but I don't plan to use it unless you attack me first." He slowly stepped out from behind the rock, some five yards away. There was a blackened stripe up the left side of his helmet where Harris shot him.

Harris probably could have killed him before he had a chance to use that pistol, even through all that armor. He should have just shot him right then. Safer that way. But he didn't.

There was a scraping noise to the left, and the other vault kid emerged, sliding clumsily down the side of the wall. He stopped short when he saw the armored man.

"What took you so long?" Harris asked without moving his eyes from the soldier.

"I couldn't get down. It's a lot harder than getting up, you know? Uh...why aren't you shooting that guy?"

"I don't know," Harris said to the man in front of him. "Why don't you tell me?"

"I'm not really Enclave," he said. "I was sent to join them as a spy. I'm with the Brotherhood."

"If that's supposed to make me like you better, it's not working."

"I don't really care how much you like me, I just want you to know that I'm not with them, I don't care that you just killed three of their operatives, and I'm not reporting back to them after this. I can't just stand by while they kill innocents. My mission is a bust, anyway. They don't let outsiders get ahold of any useful information no matter how long they've been with the Enclave."

"And why are you telling me this?"

"I don't want to be shot in the back when I leave."

Harris hesitantly lowered his rifle a fraction. "Fair enough."

The man looked at the both of them. He turned to leave, then stopped. "Is she alright?" he asked, indicating Lydia.

"She's alive," Harris said shortly.

He nodded approvingly. "You'll want to get those Pip-Boys off soon. It won't be long before they figure out this squad failed and they send another." He paused, and looked about to say something else, but he didn't. Giving the fallen sergeant one last glance, he left.

Harris moved around the edge of the rock to watch him walk until he disappeared beyond the edge of the hill.

"That was weird," the vault kid said. "Hey, spies, like, sneak around and kill people and stuff, right? Kinda like ninjas? Uh, hey, I think someone shot you." He pointed at the partially healed wound in his stomach. The kid looked at him oddly then, like he'd just remembered that he looked like a character from a horror movie. Harris hardly noticed those looks anymore, usually. He couldn't really remember a time when people hadn't looked at him like that. But the way the vault kids reacted was a little different. More bewilderment than revulsion.

Some movement caught his eye. Andy slid down from his perch and paused as his feet touched the ground, as though waiting for his head to settle. He looked over at them warily, and attempted a smile. It didn't come out quite right. He still had his pistol in his right hand. He fondled it for a second, then slowly placed it back in his holster. He didn't let go of it.

Harris just stared at him for a long time before speaking. "Get out of here," he said finally.

The slaver looked surprised for a moment. Dropping his hand from his gun, he hurriedly staggered off in the direction the Brotherhood spy had gone.


	18. Chapter 18

_I always wondered how you're supposed to stim your head. For some kind of facial abrasion or something, then maybe. But how would you get the needle inside your skull? You could stick it in your eye socket, I guess. Maybe not._

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 18**

The first sensation Lydia had was the heavy throb of a headache. Her head was spinning, and it felt like she was moving. She was lying against something softer than the ground but harder than a bed. Something warm. She tried to open her eyes, then realized they were already open. Things in the dark moved past her at a steady rate. She _was _moving. Someone was carrying her on their back.

She slurred something. Somehow she didn't seem to be able to make the muscles in her mouth work properly.

Someone moved into view, sideways in her vision. They leaned down, and Butch's face appeared. He smirked and said something, but she didn't really process what it was.

Then the person carrying her spoke in a low, rough voice. It was a safe voice. She closed her eyes and laid her head against Harris's shoulder, and the voices faded away.

Then her head hurt again. It pounded lightly in time with some repetitive sound nearby. She couldn't feel the wind, she noticed, and the stagnant air smelled of cigarettes. She squinted her eyes open, and was confused by what appeared in front of her. Wooden slats arranged in a pattern of parallel lines. A ceiling, on which a fan-the source of the sound-turned slowly, and from which a dim lightbulb hung and flickered and buzzed faintly.

She was in a house. A real, intact pre-war house. She reached a hand over to the wall next to the bed she was lying on. It was wood, like the ceiling, but half covered in yellowed paint that was peeling away in long, jagged strips. It was strange that people used to make houses out of wood. Metal was so much sturdier. But the wood was much more warm and soft. Something about the pliability of the half-rotted material was nice.

She dropped her hand as she realized she didn't know how she got to this place. They were fighting the Enclave soldiers. Two of them were dead. Andy fainted. They were hiding together, waiting for the last soldiers to come...and then Harris was carrying her.

She sat up and pushed her legs over the side of the bed. The movement made her nauseous. She threw her hand over her mouth, but the feeling passed. She was in a room with two chairs, a small table, and two beds (she was currently on the larger one). Gradually she edged to her feet and looked around the small building. Miscellany of every variety filled the room, all perfectly organized in the many shelves, trunks and bookcases-clothing, medicine, cans and boxes of food, books and magazines, holotapes and holotape players, a variety of soap and cleaners, electronic and mechanical scraps and tools, and, in one corner, an overabundance of weapons and ammunition. Even among the teetering stacks of objects piled along the walls, nothing looked out of place.

One item stood out from the rest, uncrowded and given its own section of the shelf. It was a picture in a frame, and the only thing in the room that could have been perceived as decorative. Lydia teetered over to it and picked it up. It was a photograph of a smiling woman with her arm around a boy near her age. She must have been his mother. They had the same oval face, light blue eyes, and wavy brown hair.

There was a sound behind her, and she turned around, still holding the picture. Harris was standing there above a square door in the floor that she hadn't noticed before. _A fallout shelter._ She could see the metal walls in the room below. A tiny vault. Harris held a stimpak in one hand. He had put his weapons away somewhere.

Lydia held up the photo. "This is you."

He nodded.

Lydia smiled. Something about the picture delighted her. She set it gingerly back on the shelf and pulled out her own photographs, the ones she'd taken in the supermarket. She leaned them against the wall behind the shelf. They were only going to get more wrinkled and bloody if she kept them with her. "How come you don't smile in pictures?" she asked.

"The mere vision of someone with a camera doesn't instantly inspire joy in me." He held the stimpak out to her. "Here."

"You could at least make an attempt," she snorted, ignoring the stimpak. "This is your house?"

"No, I'm just borrowing it."

"Really_?_"

He gave her an odd look. "No. That was a joke."

"Oh."

"You should use this now. Do you want me to do it?"

"Yes." Using a stim on one's head was always uncomfortable. It was preferable for someone else to do it. She moved closer so he could reach her.

He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her, or himself, as he reached around with his other arm. It was a very simple movement, but it caught her off guard. The only time he ever seemed to touch her was to push or pull her out of the way of gunfire; never this gently. There was a sharp pain in the back of her head, then nothing. Her dizziness was gone.

"I don't remember what happened before this. The last thing I knew, we were behind that rock, the soldiers were on the other side...They shot you!" she suddenly remembered. She looked down at his stomach, but he was wearing a new shirt, sans burn hole.

"It's healed," he said, tossing the used stimpak into a can on the wall. "Not a problem. One of them hit you-"

"They shot _me?_"

"No. She punched you, and you hit your head on a rock. You were knocked unconscious, but you shot her just before you went down. The plasma ate through her helmet, so it didn't take much to finish her off."

"So everyone's okay? I think I saw Butch earlier."

"Yes. He's outside."

Lydia was a little afraid to ask her next question. "What about..."

"The slaver is alive."

That was a surprise. She was sure he would have killed Andy. "Thank you."

"He did try to help us."

"Twice."

"Once. Helping me get rid of something he inflicted on me in the first place doesn't count." He leaned against the wall, folding his arms. "You're too trusting. He helped so that we wouldn't execute him. He recognized your naivete and exploited it."

_Naivete?_ "I trusted _you_."

He gave her a wry smile. "You didn't have a choice."

She shrugged. "It wasn't that I trusted Andy. And I don't care if he dies." The coldness of that sentence surprised her. "I just didn't want it to be us who killed him." She looked up at him. "Do you...still think that we should have?"

His smile faded, and he looked away. He didn't get to answer, because just then the front door opened and Butch walked in. Lydia squinted at the light. He didn't look much worse for wear, except for some plasma burns on his jacket.

"Hey, you're awake, finally. You were asleep for about fifty hours. Well, maybe like, three or something. But it was a long time."

"We've been here that long?"

"Nah, we just got here. You slept on the way. He carried your lazy ass all the way here. Which means he made me carry that guy's stupid backpack, so thanks a lot." He held up his Pip-Boy. "So, what are we going to do about these? I don't want those encore guys following me around everywhere I go."

"You aren't going back to the vault?"

He frowned. "What are you talking about? Why would I go back?"

"I just thought...after all that...I mean, you can't shoot..."

"I just learned how, didn't I?"

"Um...I suppose." She looked at her own Pip-Boy. "There's no way that I know of to take out just the GPS. The only thing we can do is get them off completely, or break them."

"Well we have to get them off. I'm not walking around with a broken Pip-Boy on my arm for the rest of my life."

"I agree. But how are we supposed to do that?"

He shrugged. "Can't you just unscrew them or something? I dunno."

Harris went to a trunk and pulled something out. It took Lydia a while to figure out what it was.

"This is another joke, right?" she said.

"No."

"You sure you won't kill us?" Butch asked.

"Reasonably sure."

Lydia looked at the circular saw in his hand anxiously. She sighed. "Do you have more stimpaks?"

"Yes, but we won't need them. Let's go outside so I can see properly."

Outside the house, Lydia rested her left arm on a rock, palm up. She tried in vain to quell the voice in her head that kept reminding her that if Harris messed up, her dominant arm could be permanently damaged.

He powered up the saw, which whined loudly, and lowered it toward her forearm. Butch looked on, his eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar. Lydia shut her eyes as the squeal of metal against metal started and sparks scattered. She tried not to twitch as they singed her arm. She could feel the blade making its way down toward her wrist. The screeching stopped. She saw that he'd cut through the top layer of the metal and was getting ready to make another cut. He looked at her questioningly, and she nodded for him to continue.

The blade cut closer this time, and the wind it generated made it feel like it was grazing her arm. Maybe it was. She tried to squish her arm as close against the other side of the metal sleeve as possible. The saw jerked a few times, but otherwise Harris kept it remarkably still. Lydia could feel it nearing her wrist.

Just as he came to the edge of the sleeve, the saw jolted slightly but sharply downward. She gasped. Harris lifted the saw away. There was a cut in the glove of the Pip-Boy. There was no blood. "It didn't go through," she said with relief.

There was now a slit going all the way down the sleeve. She slid her fingers into the crack and tried to pry the halves apart. Harris took hold of the other half and pulled. Millimeter by millimeter, the gap widened. She squeezed her hand out of the glove and twisted her arm sideways to pull it out through the gap. After a thorough amount of wriggling, it popped out.

She stared at her forearm in amazement for a moment. It looked so small and pale. There was a line near her elbow where the dirt and tan started. As she moved it up and down it felt as though it were floating.

Suddenly she had a vision of the Pip-Boy as an elongated slave collar. She wasn't quite as sorry to see it go.

"Do mine," Butch said.

The process went about as it did with Lydia's, though it took considerably more effort to get the bulk of his arm out through the small opening.

"Wow," he gaped when it was finally free. He gave Lydia a goofy grin, ignoring the few red nicks from the saw.

Lydia asked Harris for some alcohol wipes and bandages. Maybe neither of them cared, but she knew she'd never be able to stop thinking about it if the cuts weren't cleaned and covered. He retrieved them and Butch used them absentmindedly. He flexed the muscles in both arms, comparing them. "This is weird, huh?"

"In case you haven't noticed, there isn't much about this that isn't."

"Yeah," he agreed, glancing at Harris surreptitiously. He got up and stretched, then looked down at the broken Pip-Boys. "Can they still track them?"

"Yes. We need to get the power off. I think I could get to the battery..." She picked it up and prodded at it. Butch took his off somewhere a few yards away. A moment later she jumped at a loud smash. She looked up and there was a large rock sitting on top of his flattened Pip-Boy.

"Will that work?" he said.

Lydia smiled and held out her own Pip-Boy to Butch, and it met the same end as his.

He brushed his hands off and stood with arms akimbo. "Well."

"Where are you going to go now?" she asked.

He shrugged. "When I left 101 I saw these signs for 'Megaton'. Maybe I'll go there. It's a city or something, right?"

Lydia nodded. "That's probably a good idea." Safer than wandering the wastes, at least.

"You could come with, if you want."

She shook her head. She couldn't go back there.

He made an indifferent gesture. "Alright. Then I guess, maybe I'll see you around sometime."

"Yeah."

He shifted his weight back and forth and looked at her appraisingly. "You know, it seems like you're a lot cooler than you used to be."

"Thanks."

Butch didn't seem to catch the sarcasm. "It would have been cool if, maybe, we could have hung out more or something, you know? When we were in the vault."

"Yeah," Lydia said. "It was a waste of time, all that fighting. Pointless."

"All that getting your ass handed to you, you mean?"

She picked up a rock and held it threateningly, ready to throw. Butch flinched, grinning. Lydia tossed it at his feet. "You think you're so funny, huh? Go away, already."

He smirked and raised a hand in a wave, then turned and started walking. As Lydia watched his back slowly fading into the distance, Harris went inside. He returned with the mesmetron.

She looked at it disdainfully. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Come on." He motioned to the Pip-Boys. "Bring those." He went around to the back yard-if it could be called a yard. The house was on a rocky ridge, surrounded by outcroppings that mostly shielded it from view from the front and sides. In back was what remained of a short fence, and beyond that...nothing.

Lydia gaped. The house was on the edge of a cliff. Harris walked right up to the edge, and Lydia followed carefully. She could see for what must have been miles out into the Wasteland.

"As far as we could tell," Harris said, "the neighborhood that this house was a part of all used to be out there. It was destroyed when the bombs fell, and each year a little more of the canyon erodes away."

She leaned out as far as she dared to to look down the side. In the canyon below were the remnants of the rest of the neighborhood. There wasn't much left, but a pipe or wooden plank or piece of particularly resilient furniture stuck out of the ground every so often. At the bottom of the cliff was a small pile of debris-leftovers of years' worth of unwanted things. The sight of the distant ground made her dizzy again, and she wobbled. Harris grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the edge. "Do I have to tell you not to fall?"

"No," she assured him, sitting down cross-legged by the drop off. "How far down is it?"

He shrugged. "A few hundred feet." He tossed the mesmetron over the side.

Lydia leaned forward to watch it fall. It fell and fell and fell, turning slightly as it got smaller and smaller and finally hit the ground, shattering into several pieces. She reached for the Pip-Boys. Looking at the splintered screens one last time, she threw them both. She watched them tumble through the air and bounce against the ground with a far away noise.

She looked up suddenly. "That was Butch, by the way. You probably figured out that we're both from 101."

"Forgive me if I don't mourn his leaving us too very much."

Lydia grinned. "I didn't think you would. He's not really my type, either. He just kind of started following me. I couldn't get rid of him."

"I know the feeling."

She looked over to see if he was joking or not, and there was that half-smile of his. Still, the comment made her spirits drop. He wouldn't put up with her forever.

She stared down at the tiny metal bits below. It was hard to believe they were gone. She ran her fingers across the clean, white skin of her newly freed arm. "No more VATS."

"No."

"It wasn't working very well, anyway. I don't think it's meant to be used so often. It probably would have made me sick if I kept using it."

Harris turned and went back inside, so Lydia climbed to her feet and followed him back into the dim, smoky room. "Do you have my gun?" she asked. "The plasma one?"

"Yeah. Over there." He pointed to the coffee table, then went to another small table with a carton of cigarettes on it and took one out. Holding it up to his mouth, he flicked a lighter at the tip. He breathed in deeply, then exhaled the smoke contentedly.

Lydia went to the table and picked up the gun. It was glowing as always, ready to spray someone with corrosive goo. There didn't seem to be a way to turn it off.

Her eyes fell on the glass on the surface of the table. Her reflection looked back at her. Her shirt, which had been in relatively good condition to start with, had rips in the stomach and collar and was about half covered in the blood of many people and animals, including her. Her face was not a lot better. She wiped at it with a sleeve, but it didn't help much. She looked tired. She looked ghoulish. _That's why none of my cuts are infected,_ she thought. _The radiation killed all the bacteria. _

"I'm becoming a ghoul," she said as she suddenly remembered her earlier discovery. It was not a question, nor was she telling him for his benefit. She knew he already knew.

Harris was quiet for a minute. Smoke trailed lazily from the end of his cigarette. "Yeah."

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Would you want to give someone news like that?"

"It doesn't seem all that bad."

"It's just something that most people aren't happy to hear. But no, it's not that bad, aside from the obvious. The whole 'parts of your body falling off' thing is a little annoying."

Lydia's eyes widened. "Parts of your body fall off?"

He pointed to the hole where his nose should have been. "We can't retain cartilage. It also causes osteoarthritis." He watched her closely. He must not have seen the reaction he was looking for. "You seem to be taking this very well."

"I was never that concerned with how I looked. Anyway," she said, picking at a bit of skin near her fingernail that was almost thin enough that she could see the muscle underneath, "I think it's kind of cool."

For the first time she'd seen, Harris laughed out loud. She'd been beginning to wonder if he was even capable of it. She couldn't help but start giggling as well. "What?"

"_That_ is something that I've never heard anyone say."

She smiled, embarrassed, and picked at the edge of her bloody shirt. She really needed some different clothes. "Is that why you helped me?" she asked.

He paused as he took in her question. "What...because you're a ghoul?

She nodded.

He frowned. "You really think I'm that shallow?"

"No," she said quickly. "It's just..."

"You asked this before," he recalled. He tapped his cigarette on the rim of an ashtray. "You really want to know why I wanted to help you?"

Lydia nodded.

He breathed out a stream of smoke. "When you first saw me, you asked if I was okay."

She waited for him to continue, but he just looked at her blankly.

"That's it?"

"Basically."

"But who wouldn't ask that, if they didn't know about ghouls?"

"A lot of people."

Lydia wondered about that. Other Wastelanders had learned to be stingy with their supplies. Most probably wouldn't go around offering stimpaks to strangers. But what would Butch or Amata have done if it had been them who found Harris? Surely anyone else from the vault would have done the same as she.

"Did you know," she said, "that the ancient Greeks believed it was important to be kind to strangers, in case they were gods in disguise, testing them?"

"Are you a god?"

She snorted. "I was going to ask you that."

There was a pause filled only by the turning of the fan. It seemed very quiet now that they had nowhere to go, no one to fight, no strategizing to do. Lydia wondered what Harris did when he wasn't off shooting up the Wasteland. It was hard to imagine him lounging around reading a magazine or something.

"I wanted to tell you..." Harris started. He wasn't looking at her anymore. "Do you remember the day after Shin left...I called you stupid."

"Yeah."

"Well you're not."

Lydia smiled sarcastically. "Thanks."

"I'm serious."

She scratched her arm absently. "Did you think I'd come back for you?"

"...no."

She was a little crestfallen, but it wasn't really a shock. She probably wouldn't have expected her to come back either, if she were him. "Good to see you have so much faith in me."

"I appreciate you proving me wrong."

She looked down at the gun in her hands. "I'm really glad I met you," she said quietly. "I hope that wherever I go next, there are people like you there."

"You're leaving?"

She looked up at him. "Well...I guess, yeah."

His brow furrowed slightly in confusion.

"I mean, unless you don't want me to," she added hopefully. "I do still want to go to Underworld."

He shrugged awkwardly as he chose his words. "I...wouldn't mind, if you wanted to go with me."

"Oh. Okay." She looked down again to hide a smile. When she peeked back up, he was smiling back at her bemusedly.

It was then that something over his shoulder caught her eye. She saw a door to a room beyond that she hadn't noticed before. She could see white tile and a curtain on a rod. It almost seemed to glow with heavenly light. She stared at it in disbelief. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

"Is that-is that a shower?"

**THE END**

_Infinite thanks to anyone who took the time to get all the way to this point. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I never expected anyone to show such enthusiasm for it the way some of you have. :D_

_I didn't want to preface it with this at the beginning, but this is my first ever story of any significant length or quality (meaning more than, like, 3000 words). I really want to get better and I would love any constructive criticism anyone has to offer. Seriously. I've gotten exactly ONE critical comment, and I'm not sure that one even counts. Comments on overarching themes and things I do/don't do frequently would be greatly appreciated. _

_But then, "You're awesome"s are always welcomed as well. :P If you liked it, what DID you like about it? (Please use clear penmanship and answer in complete sentences on college-rule notebook paper.)_

_Stay tuned, I'm about 40,000 words into the sequel. _


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